


For You I Came This Far

by circ_bamboo



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-09
Updated: 2012-04-09
Packaged: 2017-11-03 07:33:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circ_bamboo/pseuds/circ_bamboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Winona, the <em>Yorktown</em>, Pike, the events of the movie, etc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For You I Came This Far

**Author's Note:**

> Sparked by a conversation in which boosette sent the line, “but but but WE ARE ALL IN FAVOR of Pike/Winona, yes?” It just snowballed from there. Thanks so much to imachar for a hell of a _fast_ beta, especially considering the length. Also, thanks to everyone who voted in the polls. :) Title from [here](http://youtu.be/tqHgZhLLTc0%20). Lieutenant Zel also belongs to boosette; I just borrow her a lot.
> 
> Be advised that there are some brief references to torture, although nothing happens on-screen.

**TO:** kirk.winona@starfleet.fed  
 **FROM:** auto-notification@starfleet.fed  
 **SUBJECT:** James T. Kirk (00485930405)

Commander Winona R. Kirk:

James T. Kirk, identification number 00485930405, has recently changed his status from DEPENDENT to CADET.

James T. Kirk, identification number 00485930405, has listed you as EMERGENCY CONTACT.

If this notification was in error, please inform STARFLEET COMMAND as soon as possible.

Do not hit ‘reply.’ This messaging account is not monitored.

\--

 **TO:** kirk.james@starfleet.fed  
 **FROM:** kirk.winona@starfleet.fed  
 **SUBJECT:** You’re at the academy?

What happened?

\--

 **TO:** kirk.winona@starfleet.fed  
 **FROM:** kirk.james@starfleet.fed  
 **SUBJECT:** RE: You’re at the academy?

Oh. Yeah. I forgot they’d notify you. It’s a long story. Do you know some captain named Christopher Pike? I guess he wrote his dissertation on Dad. Anyway, the short version is that there was a barfight and the next thing I know I’m on a shuttle to San Francisco.

I’m fine. I think I like it here. Hell of a lot more interesting than what I was doing before.

Does this count as our yearly email?

\--

 **TO:** kirk.james@starfleet.fed  
 **FROM:** kirk.winona@starfleet.fed  
 **SUBJECT:** RE: You’re at the academy?

I haven’t talked to Chris Pike since he interviewed me right after you were born, but yes, I know him by reputation. Are you sure you don’t have a concussion?

And yes, this can count as our yearly email.

If you need anything from me, though, feel free to make it twice-yearly emails. I’m on Captain Pike’s old ship (the _Yorktown_ ), with his former XO as the new captain.

\--

 **TO:** kirk.winona@starfleet.fed  
 **FROM:** kirk.james@starfleet.fed  
 **SUBJECT:** RE: You’re at the academy?

I don’t have a concussion. My roommate is a doctor. He’d notice.

You’re on the _Yorktown_? Huh. I’m guessing Pike didn’t know that.

I’m Command track, not Engineering, but if I need math help, I’ll drop you a line.

\--

 **TO:** pike.chris@starfleet.fed  
 **FROM:** kirk.winona@starfleet.fed  
 **SUBJECT:** James T. Kirk

Dear Captain Pike:

Apparently you and my son appear to be acquainted now. I’d offer you my sympathies but I doubt you’d take them.

It also appears that you are unaware of my current posting. For the record, then: I’m currently fixing the engines in your old ship.

Captain Number One says hello, or she probably would if I told her I was messaging you.

Sincerely,

Commander Winona Kirk  
Chief Engineer, U.S.S. _Yorktown_

\--

_Transcript of real-time video communication between Number One, Captain, and Christopher Pike, Captain, excerpted._

PIKE: Winona Kirk is your chief engineer? When did that happen?  
ONE: When I let Cait take a year off to go to command school.  
PIKE: Well, obviously, but . . . I mean . . . [He shakes his head.] I just scraped Kirk’s younger son off the floor of a bar and convinced him to enroll in the academy.  
ONE: Yes, she told me. Actually, she asked how the hell you managed that, as the last time she saw you, you were apparently not the kind of person who could manage such a feat.  
PIKE: What the hell is that supposed to mean?  
ONE: Well, when was the last time you saw her?  
PIKE: [frowns] I don’t know that I’ve actually seen her since I interviewed her for my dissertation, so about twenty years ago, give or take. Well, okay. That makes sense.  
ONE: Are you telling me you didn’t spring forth from the Academy, fully formed as a captain?  
PIKE: As far as you and anyone who has ever been under my command is concerned, I absolutely did.  
ONE: That’s fine. I’ll go ask Phil.  
PIKE: Oh, no. Don’t do that!  
[They both laugh.]  
PIKE: Is Kirk going to be staying with you after Cait returns?  
ONE: I don’t know. I asked her to consider extending her tour with the _Yorktown_ and she said she’d think about it. I’m a little worried that with someone _less_ than Winona Kirk, Cait will find it nearly impossible to concentrate on being the XO and staying _out_ of Engineering, so I hope I’ll have her for at least another year.  
PIKE: Speaking of XOs, how’s Lieutenant Deer working out for you?  
ONE: [glares at him] I’d rather not talk about it.

\--

“Number One to Engineering. Commander Kirk, could you please report to the captain’s ready room.”

Winona Kirk looked up from her desk, where she was piecing together a very small and remarkably unimportant for all its intricacy chip board, and said, “I’ll be there in a moment, sir.” As she stood, she pressed a few buttons on the monitors above her desk. Nothing appeared to be going on out of the ordinary, so she was willing to guess this had something to do with Lieutenant Deer.

It was a safe guess; she saw the captain pacing around the small room as she entered, and mere milliseconds after the door shut, Captain One said, “You’re qualified to be a bridge commander, correct?”

Winona nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. I’m going to need you to take some shifts on the bridge in the near future.”

“May I ask why, sir?” Winona had actually been expecting this since Lieutenant Zelát had told her of the personality conflict (to put it politely) between One and her XO four months ago. Frankly, she was only asking why because she hoped One was going to let loose and _swear_ or something.

One closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “This goes no further, Commander.”

“Of course not.”

Another pause, and, “If I have to serve seven full shifts a week with Lieutenant Deer, it is very possible that I will commit a felony and, as the highest-ranked officer on the ship other than myself, it will in that case be your duty to put me in the brig and take over command of the _Yorktown_ until we return somewhere where I can be court-martialed.”

“Is justifiable homicide still an affirmative defense?” Winona asked.

“I very much hope so!” was One’s response.

“Well, in that case,” Winona said, “I can’t refuse without being an accessory to murder.”

“I was hoping you’d see it that way,” One said, smiling. “I’ll send an amended duty roster around later.”

“Sounds good.”

“You can get back to Engineering now, Commander. Thank you for your assistance in this matter.”

“Of course, sir.” She turned to leave, and then said, “Actually, Captain, I believe that Dr. Boyce outranks me. If we need to take control of the ship, should I defer to his judgment?”

One’s snort was not entirely unexpected. “I asked Dr. Boyce to take a bridge shift or two, and he gave me the ‘you-know-better’ look before saying that if I made it an order, he would do so.”

Winona laughed, and left, saluting on her way out. She liked Captain One; liked Dr. Boyce and Lieutenant Zelát, the science officer, as well. As a matter of fact, she liked nearly everyone she had to work with on the ship except Lieutenant Deer.

She hadn’t had to work directly with the lieutenant yet, but from what she was given to understand, he was very bright, very knowledgeable, and outstanding at two things: picking the wrong time to display that knowledge, and coming to the wrong conclusion based on the facts presented. She could only guess that Starfleet thought that having actual experience under a captain who made nearly all the correct conclusions would fix that.

 _It might, if One doesn’t kill him first,_ she thought, and shook her head.

When she got back to her desk in Engineering, she found a message from Dr. Boyce blinking at the corner of one of her screens. _Is anyone dead, maimed, or otherwise injured?_

She chuckled to herself and replied, _No, but she warned me that I may have to command the ship if she kills him._

 _Better you than me_ was his reply. _Still on for tonight?_

Winona groaned. _After that pun, I’m not so sure._ A new batch had come up ready in the still that she totally didn’t know about in the engine room, and she’d commandeered a bottle and called the only person on the command staff who could appreciate decent alcohol. _Well_ , she amended in her head, _decent non-beer alcohol_. She had heard rumors that Lieutenant Zel sometimes brewed beer in her lab, but hadn’t had it confirmed yet.

A few hours later, ensconced in a comfy armchair, she swirled the new hooch around in her glass and held it up to the light. “I don’t know, Phil. I know you say it’s fine, but I’ve never seen it quite this . . . cloudy.”

“I didn’t say it was fine,” Dr. Boyce--Phil--said. “I said it wouldn’t kill us.” He was similarly seated in a chair, glass in one hand, his feet propped up on an end table. “You going to try it?”

“On the count of three?” Winona suggested, and Phil nodded. “One, two . . . three.” She took a ginger sip, swished it around her mouth, and swallowed. “Hm.”

“Tastes like engine-room hooch,” he said.

“Yup,” she said. “Only--what’s that aftertaste? Carrot?” She frowned, and looked at the glass. “What did they use in this?”

“I don’t think carrot, quite,” he said. “Maybe more like those carrot-like bits you find in Andorian curry.”

“Oh, _aavli_ ,” she said. “Maybe.” She took another sip. “Whew. Packs a punch, anyway.”

“So, better than Fifty-Two?”

“They’re all better than Fifty-Two.” She shuddered. The carrot-y batch was Fifty-Six; Forty-Nine was the first batch that had finished after she took over as chief engineer. “Better than Fifty-Four, even, I’d say.”

“Not as good as Fifty-One, though.” He made a note on a padd and set it aside. “Soda? Ice?”

“Nah,” she said. “I’ll drink this one straight. I think the carrot is growing on me.”

“Four more batches,” he said, adding ice to his own glass. He meant, before she left the _Yorktown_.

Winona shrugged. “Actually,” she said, in her best off-hand manner, “Captain’s asked me to stay on for a year past that.”

“Oh, really,” Phil said, and his utter lack of surprise wasn’t, in and of itself, a surprise.

“She seems to think I’ll be able to keep Commander Barry out of Engineering.”

He snorted. “You and what army?”

She gave him a look over the rim of her glass.

“Well, maybe,” he said, conceding.

“You people,” she said, mock-sighing. “You seem to think that you can run roughshod over every other officer in the fleet.”

“You’ve never actually met Cait, have you.”

She shook her head.

“Well, you’re in for a treat.”

“You would think so,” she said, tongue a tad loosened from the alcohol, which had hit her system like the proverbial Mack truck. “Er, wait. Are we still pretending I don’t know about that?”

“Are we still pretending I haven’t had my hands up your--”

“Yes, all right,” she said, cutting him off. He’d done a couple of her prenatal checkups back when she was pregnant with Jim twenty-odd years ago, before the _Kelvin_ had taken off; there was only a limited number of doctors in Starfleet with training in obstetrics, and she’d seen all of ‘em between Sam and Jim.

Well, that and he’d done her last gyn checkup, but in order to be friends with the ship’s CMO, one generally had to ignore that.

“Speaking of,” Phil said, and took another sip of his drink. “I got an interesting message from Chris the other day.”

‘Chris,’ of course, being Captain Pike; something of his ghost lingered strongly over nearly every part of the ship. It was less explainable than Barry’s fingerprints being everywhere; at least she was coming back. Pike, of course, was due to get the _Enterprise_ when she was finished. “Oh?” Winona said. “Yes, he apparently found Jim at a bar, picking a fight with about six cadets. I understand there was a young woman involved.”

He laughed. “Well, that was more than he told me. He’s excited, I guess, to see what Jim can do.”

Winona sighed. “Yeah, Jim put up some pretty good test scores before he finished high school, but after he graduated, he refused all of his college offers, told me to my face that he had no desire to make anything useful of himself, and rode off on that damn motorcycle of his.” 

She’d spent the first year after that wondering what the hell she’d done wrong, and had finally come to the conclusion that it had taken a village to make Jim Kirk who he was, and she shouldn’t try to shoulder more than her share of the blame for it. The fact that she’d managed to keep in contact and on not-horrible terms with her wayward son was pretty remarkable, she thought.

“We’ll see if Captain Pike has any more luck than I did.” She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice, but probably failed.

Phil, wisely, didn’t respond to her tone, but said, “Chris has pretty good luck talking most people into things.”

Winona raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been told that, but honestly, the one and only time I remember meeting him, he couldn’t have talked his way out of a paper bag.” She could only blame the alcohol for what followed. “Cute as hell, but so nervous I thought he was going to throw up on my shoes.”

He snorted. “He got better. I promise.”

She didn’t say anything, but apparently the look on her face showed what she was thinking, because he added, “You’ll see in about four months.”

“Better-looking?” she asked wistfully. “Is that possible? Oh, hell, I’m plastered. This batch is _lethal_.”

“It is, at that,” he said. “Are you staying here tonight?”

“If I am, I want another glass. And no more personal questions.”

“I have not asked you a single personal question tonight,” he said, protesting, even as he poured more of Fifty-Six into her glass.

“Damnit, you’re right,” Winona said, after a moment. “I keep revealing stupidly inappropriate bits of information all by myself. Like, the LS who does the uniforms? I would hit that. I mean. Oh, damn.” She sighed.

“What happens under the influence of engine-room hooch stays under the influence of engine-room hooch,” he said, which made her laugh.

“Oh, you’re drunk as hell, too, aren’t you?”

“Completely,” he said. “I think this ought to be cut with Fifty-Five before it’s released to the general public.”

“Good idea. Remind me to send Nik an email.” Lieutenant Nikhil Patil was absolutely not in charge of the still. Assuming there was one. She giggled.

 **TO:** ANONYMOUS-YORKTOWN-ENG  
 **FROM:** ANONYMOUS-YORKTOWN  
 **SUBJECT:** fifty-six

N, you might want to re-run some chemical tests on aavli (if that’s what was in there) and fifty-six before you release it. Stuff packs a punch, to the point where I’m wondering if there’s a by-product in there that P’s scan didn’t catch.

W.

\--

The next morning, she woke up and groaned, her face mashed against one of the armrests of Phil’s couch. She was too damn old for this shit. Thank God he’d left a hypo about two inches from her nose. She stuck it into her neck and sighed, as the hiss made her feel better psychosomatically.

She heard faint noises coming from his attached bathroom, and thought she probably should sneak out while he was still in there, but it was taking a couple moments for the hangover hypo to work. She sat up slowly and pushed her feet back into her shoes.

On the table in front of her was a padd, with a text note from Phil: “Winona--Watch this sometime, when you’re bored.” She picked it up and thumbed it on. The memory contained a single video clip. It was, from the name, a vidcomm message of some sort, left by Captain Pike for Phil.

She hesitated before she hit ‘play.’ She really, seriously hadn’t thought about the kid who’d written his dissertation on the _Kelvin_ at all in the years since he’d interviewed her. Of course she’d hardly avoided hearing his name on the ‘fleet news, but she didn’t search any information out; his successes hadn’t registered as anything other than those of a fellow officer.

There was no real reason why she shouldn’t watch the clip, though.

Except she didn’t.

She took it with her back to her room and put it in a desk drawer, figuring she’d find it the next time she was drunk and maudlin.

* * *

Winona served a couple of shifts on the bridge with Lieutenant Deer before she and he truly butted heads. The _Yorktown_ was circling around a planet with no sentient life, taking readings to check on an anomaly in the system’s star. Lieutenant Zel was very excited, and her department had been working nearly round-the-clock for the last three days. It was nearly the end of beta shift, and Winona was yawning into her fist.

“Sir, the readings from Erthion Alpha are starting to approach the danger range,” Adivor, currently working the science station, said.

“Garrison, alert Lieutenant Zelát,” Winona said. The science officer and a handful of people had gone down to the surface of the planet.

A few minutes later, Zel and her party requested transport. “Sir, there’s too much interference,” the transporter tech reported.

“All right,” Winona said, with a sigh. “Wei,” she said to the pilot, “time for taxi duty.”

Wei nodded, but before she could stand, Lieutenant Deer stood up and said, “With all due respect, Commander Kirk, is Lieutenant Wei the best person to send for the job?”

“Ready room, now, Lieutenant Deer,” Winona snapped. “Wei, you have your orders.”

Wei nodded again and left quickly; Zsir took her place at the helm as Winona stalked over to the door, not bothering to look to see if Deer was following.

He was, right on her heels; when the door slid shut behind him, he said, “Sir, sending down our best pilot in a shuttle when we are this close to the Neutral Zone seems rather impractical.”

“Do you know what else is impractical, Lieutenant Deer?” Winona said. “Questioning my orders on the bridge.”

Lieutenant Deer blinked. “Technically, I outrank you,” he said.

“You do not,” she said. “At the moment, I am commanding the bridge, and whether or not you are first officer is irrelevant at this moment.”

“Respectfully, Commander,” he said, and that he’d switched from ‘sir’ to her rank did not go unnoticed, “there are eight pilots on this ship, and Wei is the best. If we need to perform evasive maneuvers while she is gone, we will be at a disadvantage.”

She stared at him for a moment. Apparently he actually _did_ make all of his decisions based on statistics, and even more poorly than reported. “Two things,” she said. “First, we will not need to escape anything during the half hour or so that Wei and the landing party are not on the ship. Second, and more important, Wei is the _second_ -best pilot on this ship.” She knew that one for a fact.

“Commander, if you look at the piloting scores of the eight pilots, you will find that Wei’s were the highest.” Deer was implacable.

Winona went through the list of pilots in her head: two per shift and two swing meant . . . “Actually, Lieutenant, there are _nine_ pilots on this ship, and the one you apparently did not know about, I can guarantee, had a higher score on all the flight exams than even Wei.” She crossed her arms. “The fact that you didn’t even bother to look at the public file of your commanding officer does not speak well to your attention to detail, Lieutenant Deer. Between that and your inability to keep your opinions to yourself when they are neither relevant nor important nor, for that matter, respectful of the commander, I would find it very difficult to recommend you for a permanent position as an executive officer.”

“With all due respect, Commander Kirk, you are not a pilot.”

Actually, she had passed all the flight sims and was allowed to pilot any ship under a certain size, but that was irrelevant. “No, but Captain One is.”

“Oh,” Deer said, and flushed bright red.

“In the future,” she said, “I would advise you to expand your search parameters, and consider not opening your mouth unless you are certain what you are going to say is correct, relevant, and useful to the discussion. No one cares,” she said, holding her hand up when he looked like he was about to speak, “what your test scores are, or what anyone else’s test scores are, once you’ve been out here for a while.”

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“Dismissed,” Winona said, and he left.

She took a moment to take the security video of the previous few minutes and send it to Number One, who was apparently still awake as she sent Winona back, _Excellent._ a few minutes later.

Three or four days after that, One caught Winona in her room and said, “I don’t know why your speech worked on Deer so much better than mine ever did, but he is at least fifty percent less annoying.”

“You haven’t met my children, have you,” Winona said, and they both laughed.

* * *

About three months later was the next Kelvin Day, the first Kelvin Day she spent aboard the _Yorktown_ , and it was not mentioned. There were no ship-wide messages sent out about Kelvin Day. No one came up to her and said, “I’m so sorry for your loss, Commander,” or anything else stupid. Winona went to work in the morning, got back to her quarters after picking up dinner in the mess, and found Phil sprawled in her chair with what was probably a bottle of Fifty-One, by the shape.

“What makes you think I want company right about now?” she asked. She knew she sounded a bit harsh, but she’d spent all day on edge, waiting for someone to say something so she could pick a fight. It hadn’t happened, and her nerves were still jangling.

Phil shrugged. “It’s practically my job. In addition, I expect you to return the favor in about two weeks, because frankly, Number One is shit at the getting-a-friend-drunk-on-bad-anniversaries business.”

“Oh,” she said, and her face flushed red. That was something else they didn’t talk about--his late wife, Alicia, whom she’d met a few times before her death, a few years before George’s. It was easy to forget that she wasn’t the only one who had lost a spouse, because she was probably one of two people on the ship who knew. “I only got enough food for myself.”

He indicated a plate beside him, with a few crumbs on it. “I already ate. It’s fine.”

She sat on her bunk and set her tray down. “I feel like half of the time I spend around you involves alcohol.”

“More than that, I’d say,” he said, with a lopsided grin. “But the last time, with Fifty-Six, getting plastered wasn’t on purpose.” They’d both passed on Fifty-Seven and Fifty-Eight, and Fifty-Nine wasn’t done yet.

“Please tell me that’s not spiked with Fifty-Six,” she said, indicating the bottle. Nik’s experiments had indicated that the _aavli_ , fermented, had some strange truth-serum-like properties. They’d saved a bottle for research purposes and dumped the rest out.

“Hell, no,” he said. “You think I want to hear about your and George’s sex life?”

Winona laughed.

It took nearly an hour for her to be drunk enough to talk about George as a person.

“You know what I miss?” she said. “I miss the fact that he was so damn tall.”

Phil raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, don’t even. He had eight or ten centimeters on you. I know it’s a stupid thing to miss, and there are other tall men around, but not--well, they’re just not him.”

He nodded. “That makes sense.”

“And even after twenty-odd years, and thirty-odd since we got married, once in a while I hear someone say ‘Kirk,’ and I don’t expect it to be me.”

“Why did you change your name when you got married?” he asked.

“Why didn’t you?” she countered.

“I did,” he said. “Philip Whitson married Alicia Boyce and became Philip Boyce.”

“Oh,” she said. “Whoops.” She was a tad too inebriated to feel truly embarrassed, but she did feel a little silly for making the assumption.

He shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

“My last name was George,” Winona said. “It didn’t work very well. We thought about finding some acceptable third name but after a while it was just easier for me to change my name to ‘Kirk’ and drop the ‘George.’ I didn’t care that much; it was a name my parents chose, anyway, because _they_ couldn’t decide on a family last name.” She shrugged. “I think if my last name had not been his first name, I’d have just kept my name and screw the whole thing.”

“Do you miss him? Not his height, not the sex--not that I want to hear about that--but just _him_?”

“Do you miss Alicia?” Phil never talked about his personal life. It was a Rule. But hey, there was alcohol involved--maybe he’d say something.

He shook his head. “You don’t get to ask that until a week from Thursday.”

“I thought we were sharing here.”

He gave her a look.

She sighed. “Yes, I still miss him. But it’s closer to the way I miss my father, I guess, than it was for the first few years, where it was like I was missing an arm or something.” She took another sip of her drink. “It’s not like I can ever forget, but twenty-three years later, it--just sort of hurts like a dull headache, the kind you don’t even bother taking drugs for, rather than walking around with a knife in my chest. Which I’m sure you know.”

He nodded.

“I haven’t exactly been celibate over the last twenty years and I don’t think I could have done that without having some measure of peace about the whole situation.” She heaved another sigh. “Except today. Some years it’s worse than others.”

“Because of Jim enlisting?”

“That, and all the other crap,” she said.

“He’s always admired you, you know.”

“Jim?”

“Chris,” Phil said.

His random changes of topic made sense to her by now, or maybe it was the alcohol. “Blah, blah, strength in the face of adversity,” Winona said, with a dismissive hand gesture. “There was a whole series of pamphlets about dealing with grief with my damn face on them.”

“I know,” he said. “I gave a few of them away, against my better judgment. No, that wasn’t it, really.” But he refused to say why, and she gave up after a few minutes.

* * *

And then all of a sudden the four months were up, and it was the end of January; the _Yorktown_ was back on Earth, and she’d made plans to meet with Jim for the first time in three years.

The formal welcome-back ceremony wasn’t particularly formal; it was at five in the morning, San Francisco time, which meant that no one outside of the obligatory admiral and PR person bothered to show up. It also left the command staff a little too awake at an early hour. “Breakfast?” Phil suggested.

“Yes, please,” Number One said. “I assume you’ve already commed Cait?”

“And Chris,” he said. “Coming, Winona, Zel?”

“I’m meeting Jim at eight,” Winona demurred, but as it was only a little after 0630 she allowed herself to be persuaded.

The four went to a nearby diner and took over a corner booth, waiting for Barry and Pike to show up. It didn’t take long before Barry appeared, auburn curls still half wet from a shower, dressed in civvies. “Well, I feel out of place,” she said. “Hi--you must be Winona Kirk. I met your kid. Smart. Also a smart ass, but I’m sure you know that.”

“I’m well aware,” Winona said, smiling.

“You all might want to look away now,” Cait warned, as she slid into the booth next to Phil.

 _Huh_ , Winona thought. Apparently his reticence about his personal life didn’t include an unwillingness to participate in PDAs.

“So what’s good here?” Zel asked, her antennae almost touching with amusement.

“The hash browns,” Winona said immediately. “All the grease and salt you could ever want.”

“I do like grease and salt,” Zel said, “but I’m led to believe that hash browns are a side dish, normally.”

Winona sighed. “That’s true. I’d go for the waffles, as a main dish.”

“Mm, waffles,” Number One said. Her eyes flicked over to Cait and Phil, and then back to the chrono on the wall.

Winona nudged her and said quietly, “What, are you going to cut them off after five minutes?”

“I was thinking about it.”

“Heard that,” Cait mumbled, and went back to her . . . activities.

“Waffles, hash browns . . . how’s the bacon here?” Zel asked.

“It’s usually a little burnt,” a new voice said, and Winona stiffened. She hadn’t heard that voice in _years_ , but of course she knew who it was, and not just because the group was expecting him to join them.

Christopher R. Pike, back when he was Lieutenant Pike, had been blondish and baby-faced and almost too pretty for words. But, as Winona discovered as she looked up from her menu, those days were decidedly past. Captain Pike’s hair was mostly gray, with a little silver at the sideburns, and he had lines in his face, especially around his eyes. He’d definitely outgrown ‘pretty’ and had landed smack dab in the middle of ‘handsome,’ with a side of ‘distinguished,’ she thought. Especially in the charcoal-gray instructor’s uniform.

“That’s unfortunate,” Zel said, breaking her train of thought. 

_Right. We’re talking about bacon._

And then he smiled, and Winona forgot what the conversation had been about altogether.

When she zoned back in, he’d taken a seat on the outside, next to Number One, and Cait and Phil had finally stopped trying to perform public tonsillectomies. “I don’t know if I should be disappointed that I didn’t get that warm of a greeting,” Captain Pike said, eyebrow raised, in Phil’s general direction.

Phil leaned back against the bench and smirked. “Well, if you really want . . .”

Pike leaned in and held his gaze for exactly long enough, and then smirked back. “I’ll take a rain check. The server’s here to take our orders.”

It took about five minutes of exceedingly general conversation, mostly between Zel (who liked talking about food) and Captain “no, call me Chris--what’s this ‘captain’ business? We’re eating breakfast.” Pike before Winona could relax enough to join in. Regardless, the hash browns were delicious and delivered quickly, the syrup unreplicated, and the coffee copiously refreshed.

“You’re on Earth for how long?” Pike-- _Chris_ \--asked One.

“Three weeks. Actually twenty-two days.”

“Who’s staying here?”

“Deer,” One said, with a slight cough, and Chris’s pleasantly-neutral expression widened into a grin.

“What, you didn’t like your round of penance? Just remember what Spock was like before we beat him into submission,” he said.

Winona didn’t know who Spock was, but everyone else groaned.

“At least he improved,” One said.

“I don’t know about that,” Cait muttered, but Zel had asked a question about Spock’s current assignment at the same time, and the conversation turned to the Academy.

“Speaking of,” Chris said, “I understand that one of my advisees has to cancel his meeting with me because his mother is going to be in town.”

Winona blinked--almost, but not quite, a deer caught in the headlights--and laughed. “He told me that his schedule was so full that if we didn’t meet at 0800 today, he wasn’t going to have time for me until next Tuesday.” _And I wasn’t exactly going to tell him no._

Chris laughed as well. “That may be true--some of the cadets are doing survival training this weekend--but somehow I doubt it.”

“Hey,” Winona said. “You found him in a bar. You should have known what you were getting into.”

“Indeed,” he said. “I absolutely recruited your son into Starfleet based on how thoroughly he got his ass kicked in that bar fight.”

She shook her head sadly. “I thought I taught him better than that.” Everyone at the table laughed.

If she hadn’t been watching Chris Pike very closely, she might not have noticed a slight tightening around his eyes after he made the comment about the bar fight. It didn’t take her long to put together the tightening with the full-on wince that Lieutenant Pike had used when he had made similar statements--ones that easily could have been interpreted the wrong way, had Winona chosen.

Back in the long days after the _Kelvin_ disaster, she had chosen to interpret more of his statements the wrong way than perhaps had been strictly necessary, but--Well. That was then. This was now, and she’d given him an out, the easy quip instead of asking just why he _had_ recruited her son into Starfleet. She was rather impressed--and then embarrassed that she hadn’t expected it--that he’d gained a remarkable amount of control over the last twenty-two years.

Besides, the answer was obvious, or at least some of the answers. Jim’s test scores were sky-high; Chris’s hero-worship of George had been easily apparent when he’d interviewed her for his dissertation. Winona was a damn fine officer, if she did say so herself, and a damn fine engineer; if genetics and numbers said anything about a person, they would say that Jim was at least a good gamble.

“And on that note,” Winona said, “it is 0745 and if I don’t leave now, I’m going to be late and Jim will never let me live it down.” She waved her credit chip over the table’s reader and stood.

“Far be it from us to let our chief engineer get shown up by a mere cadet,” Number One said.

“I’ll head back to campus with you,” Chris offered. “If by any chance Jim sees us walking together . . .”

Winona laughed. “I like the way you think. Nice to meet you, Cait. See the rest of you at debrief.”

It took her a few moments, but she was able to keep her brain in line and concentrate on the walk and polite conversation, rather than Chris’s presence. And a formidable presence it was, but he seemed to be dedicating all his charm to putting her at ease. Right when she felt she could contribute more than the bare minimum, though, they turned onto the campus.

She’d been putting off thinking about it, but she was actually meeting Jim at the building next to the Kelvin memorial, and as per habit, she turned to go down a side street and enter the building through a different door.

“It’s shorter that way,” Chris said, pointing.

“Yes,” Winona said, in the same voice that she used when explaining things to very small children or very annoying lieutenants, “but we’re going this way.” He was bright, she reasoned. He’d figure it out. She bit her lip anyway.

Which he did, only a heartbeat or two later; she saw his face turn red in her peripheral vision, and he pulled his comm out of his pocket to check the time rather ostentatiously. “It’s 0756,” he said.

“What are the odds of Jim being early?” she asked, as they rounded the corner into the lobby of Kelly Hall.

“He’s ten minutes early if he figures you’ll be late and ten minutes late if he thinks you’ll be there to meet him,” Chris said, “so I’m not sure.”

Winona sighed. “Yeah, that’s what I expected. He’ll be ten minutes late.” She grinned. “I’m guessing he’s ten minutes late to your advising meetings.”

Rather than the rueful look she expected, she got a bright chuckle. “No, he’s absolutely on time,” he said. “I was early for the first two meetings and then drastically late for the next two, and he got the picture.”

And that was so--so perfect, really, that she could only laugh. She was wiping her eyes a moment later, where they’d been streaming, when she noticed Chris’s posture alter subtly, and he held out a hand.

“Good to see you again, Winona.”

“Likewise,” she said, shaking his hand, and turned to see her younger son standing behind her, stiff as a poker in his cadet reds.

“Cadet,” Chris said, as Winona turned. 

“Sir,” Jim said. “Commander.”

“Jim,” Winona said, and raised a single eyebrow.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Chris said, and disappeared into the hallway.

Jim did not relax, although he did say, “Mom.”

“Jimmy,” she said. “Let’s get more coffee.” She gestured to the kiosk nearby.

They did, and found a café table around the corner. A few sips in, after polite questions about how the other was doing, Jim said, “I thought you didn’t know Captain Pike.”

“I said I hadn’t talked to him in years, but I had breakfast with him this morning.”

He started to smirk.

“And Captain One, Dr. Boyce, Lieutenant Zelát, and Commander Barry.” Lord, she loved the boy, but occasionally she wished she’d managed to drill more manners into him and less sarcasm.

“Commander Caitlin Barry?”

She nodded.

“She subbed for Wil-hat for a week in AWC 1. She’s pretty brilliant.”

“Good to know,” she said. “She’ll be the XO when I ship out again.”

He nodded, his shoulders dropping, and he slouched back in his seat. It didn’t look as insolent as she remembered.

“And what are you doing in Advanced Warp Core Mechanics, anyway?”

A few minutes of chatting about his schedule later, Jim drummed his fingers on the table before asking, “How do you deal with it?”

“With what?” she asked. She was pretty sure he didn’t mean the flaw in the standard calculation algorithm that they’d been discussing. 

“The--the monument. Kelvin Day.” His fingers curled into quotes around the last phrase. “The first fucking week of classes a professor mentioned my father, and it couldn’t have been an accident.”

Winona almost called him on his language, but figured it would be hypocritical. “I don’t,” she said. “I’ve been way the fuck off-planet for every single Kelvin Day memorial service, or when you were younger, with you hiding from the media. I go out of my way to stay away from the monument, and I sent them a strongly-worded suggestion of what they could do with their invitation to the dedication ceremony. And if anyone mentions George Kirk to me who didn’t know him when he was alive, they never do it again.”

He gave a half-smile at the last.

“I’m not--” She closed her eyes briefly. “It’s been--well, you know exactly how many years it’s been.”

“It’s not that I’m mad that he’s dead,” Jim said. “I mean, if I were still mad about that, I’d be mad every minute of every day, and I’ve got better places to put my energy. It’s that he isn’t a person to them anymore; he’s just a symbol.”

“Shit, Jim,” she said, startled.

“Even the professors who had him sometimes use him as an object lesson.”

“I can’t even imagine,” she said. She couldn’t.

“I know,” he said. “And that’s why I’m still here.” He gestured with one hand at the building around them.

She nodded.

“So I hear there’s a tradition on ships to make moonshine in engine rooms,” Jim said.

“Lies, all of it,” she said, and they both laughed.

* * *

Later that evening, she dithered for a half hour or so before sending a quick comm message to Chris, asking if he had any spare time. He responded, suggesting dinner and drinks. _I suspect this has something to do wtih Jim,_ he said, _and I think that conversation requires alcohol._

She agreed, and they set a time and place--a bar called Grumpy’s, which supposedly had the area’s best tater tots, at 2030, the next day.

For the next twenty-four hours, she attempted to forget that she was meeting Chris Pike; otherwise she wasn’t entirely sure she’d be able to get anything done. Not that she particularly had anything important to do, but she was supposed to meet One and Cait for lunch.

Fortunately, that got postponed. Apparently some irregularities in Lieutenant Deer’s reports needed to be explained. It was a surprise to Winona; she’d thought the lieutenant was merely annoying, not incompetent. Nonetheless, it gave her another couple hours to pretend she wasn’t feeling like a teenager going on her first date. _For goodness’ sake, Winona, you’re fifty-five and dinner with your son’s advisor is_ not _a date. Get a hold of yourself._

It was cold by San Francisco standards that evening, so she found a jacket to go over her long-sleeved shirt, and took transit there. She arrived five or so minutes early, but Chris was already there, waiting in the lobby, also wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, holding his jacket. Which, Winona noticed, was much heavier than her own.

“They just have to clean off the table and we can sit,” he said.

“Good timing,” she said.

They sat a minute or two later, and ordered food, and agreed to disappear before the karaoke started at ten that night, before Winona asked, “Where are you from?”

Chris looked surprised for a moment, and said, “Here. Ish. Fleet brat. My family has a ranch out in the desert, and I spent summers there, but my dad’s an admiral now and my mother was a professor at UCSF and Stanford before she retired.”

“Hm,” she said. “Still doesn’t explain why you’re wearing a winter coat when it’s about eight degrees out.”

He laughed. “It’s _eight degrees out_. Where are you from, Andoria?”

“I’m from Iowa,” Winona said. “Where it _snows_.”

“Right,” Chris said, and looked down at his drink for a moment. “I knew that. Riverside?”

“No, that was George,” she said. “I was born and raised in Des Moines. My parents still live there. It is, contrary to popular belief, an actual city. No cows or corn.”

“Is that all it takes to be a real city?” he asked, and they both laughed.

Later, after they’d demolished an astonishing amount of food, the conversation finally turned to Jim.

“He’s doing well so far,” Chris said. “Hasn’t gotten thrown out of any more bars, or if he has, it wasn’t to a point where I was notified.”

“That’s definitely an improvement,” Winona said. “I don’t know exactly what you did, but Jim and I had an entire conversation without fighting, and we actually talked about things of substance.” She sighed. “You’re the only person around here he seems to have any use for, so I figure it must be you who civilized him.”

“You give me too much credit,” he said, but he looked pleased. “Jim’s a good kid--a good young man, that is. He’ll be a great officer. My job is to teach him when he should be a contrarian and when he shouldn’t.”

“And I’m telling you, I think it’s starting to work already.” She smiled at him, and he saluted her with his bottle. “I have no idea what you said to him to get him to join the ‘fleet, but I think I’m glad you did.”

He smiled back, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He started peeling the label off his beer bottle before he looked back up at her, and said, “That’s good. It’s not a lot of fun when the parents don’t agree with their child’s decision, and blame the recruiter.”

“Does that happen a lot?” Winona asked.

“More than I’d like,” he said, and sighed. “As much as we call ourselves a peacekeeping armada, the fact remains that people die in service, and everyone wants someone to blame. I’m--” He shrugged, and tipped his bottle to one side. “Convenient.”

“I guess,” she said. “I’m ‘Fleet, though.”

“Oh, I know,” he said, and gestured for another round of beer.

A round or two after that, they were watching what looked like a group of cadets hover around the signup terminal for the karaoke. “Probably ought to head out,” she said.

“Yeah,” Chris said. “I don’t need to hear my students caterwauling drunkenly again.”

“Again?”

“Don’t ask,” he said.

She laughed. “Speaking of,” she said, and it was probably only the beer that had her so curious. “What _did_ you say to Jim?”

“You could ask him,” he said, and she watched his face shutter rapidly, until he was Captain Pike and not Chris.

“I could,” she said, only more curious, “but you’re here and he isn’t.”

“True,” he said. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“Sure,” she said. She couldn’t think of any reason why not.

His lips twisted to one side, and then he said, “Something like, ‘your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes, and managed to save eight hundred lives, including your mother’s, and your own. I dare you to do better.’”

Winona couldn’t see for a moment, because her entire vision hazed over red. When it came back, she looked straight at Christopher Fucking Pike--who at least had the temerity to look embarrassed--and said, “You bastard.”

Standing, she slapped her credit chip against the reader on the table and walked out of the restaurant without so much as a second glance behind her. When she got back to her quarters, she sent Jim a quick message telling him she was going to be out of town for the rest of leave. She sent roughly the same message to the rest of the senior staff of the _Yorktown_ , and then, despite the late hour, arranged for transport as far away on the planet as she could manage.

* * *

Her first day in Australia cooled her off considerably, even though it was definitely summer there, and she decided she could check her messages without breaking anything sometime in the middle of her second day.

From Jim she received an _OK. See you next time._ Under other circumstances, she might have been disappointed, mostly in herself, but it wasn’t worth crafting an explanation. Especially since Jim appeared to like Pike, despite the fact that he’d rather explicitly used George. It still angered her every time she allowed herself to think about it.

From Pike himself she got, _I’m sorry._ She deleted that one right away.

From Number One she got, _For what it’s worth, he really is sorry. Yes, I know that I don’t need to apologize for him._

From Phil she got a lengthy ramble about some martini bar Cait dragged him to, which ended with, _About what Chris did--I don’t blame you for calling him names. I didn’t know he’d invoked George until he told me after you left. I told him he was forty kinds of asshole, if that helps._

She sent Phil back a description of all the Australian microbrews she’d been drinking, and finished with, _Thanks. I’m glad I didn’t punch him, because I’ve gotten this far without assaulting a superior officer._

After that, she set a filter on her account to send all the messages she really didn’t want to deal with into an entirely different folder, and decided to re-up her scuba diving certifications.

* * *

Winona returned to the _Yorktown_ at exactly the moment she was expected to return, not even hungover, and was very glad to see that Pike wasn’t there to see them off.

* * *

A week or so into the new mission, Number One called on Winona while both were off-duty, and said, “I’m certain you don’t ever want to discuss this, but--”

“With all due respect, sir,” Winona said, but One cut her off.

“No,” One said. 

“No?”

“No, you’re not going to avoid this conversation by telling me very politely to go fuck myself,” One said.

“Excuse me?” Winona tried the eyebrow of doom, but One was apparently immune.

“You don’t need to forgive Chris. Frankly, I don’t care if you do or not. You don’t ever need to talk to him again. What I need to know is if you can remain professional. He’s still one of my closest friends, and it would take a bit more than some ill-considered words to change that. The same goes for Phil and Cait.”

Winona nodded, a short, sharp gesture.

“I will support you in any decisions you make to avoid him in the future, but I would rather you do not leave my ship because of this.” One smiled, hesitant. “I doubt he’ll be on the _Yorktown_ much, especially once the _Enterprise_ is completed.”

“Oh,” Winona said, realization dawning. “Oh, good God, no. Shit. I mean--” She sighed. “No. I’m not leaving the _Yorktown_ , at least not before my contract is up.” She smiled weakly. “I’m here as long as you’ll have me.”

One nodded. “Good.”

“You didn’t really think I’d transfer because of that.”

One shrugged, and sat on Winona’s desk chair. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t really know you well enough to judge one way or another, and you did seem . . . very angry.”

“Oh,” Winona said. She paused and licked her lips. “No, I’m still angry,” she said, slowly, “but how I feel about--about Captain Pike’s recruiting tactics doesn’t bear on our relationship, professional or otherwise.”

One smiled. “I had hoped not.” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “Chris and I,” she said, and hesitated.

Winona held her breath. It was common knowledge that Pike and One had been involved somehow, years ago, but she’d known even before she got on the ship that it was something no one ever mentioned.

“I’ve known him for a long time,” One said. “Not, from what I gather, as long as you have, but much more in depth. He . . .” She sighed. “You know, from your point of view, I can see how what he did was pretty unconscionable. I wouldn’t forgive him either. I don’t even know why I promised him I’d say anything.”

“I don’t think he’s a total waste of a human being,” Winona said, “if that helps.”

“Damning with faint praise,” One said, and smiled. “He’s not. But this is neither the time nor the place for me to convince you that he’s worth giving another chance, and I’m not the one who gets to decide whether he is worth it to you.”

Winona nodded. There was really nothing she could say to that.

“Phil outright refused to say anything to you unless you go to him.”

“Okay.” Not that she was going to, but it was nice to know that his friends disapproved of what he’d said.

One stood, and shoved her hands in her pockets. “Well, anyway. That’s the last I’m going to say about it unless you have any questions.”

“Nope,” Winona said. “Thank you, though.”

One nodded and left.

* * *

A few days after that, Winona got a message from Jim, delayed because they’d been out of comm range. _What the hell did you do to Pike?_

 _\--None of your damn business._ And really, the number of people who seemed to think it _was_ their business was just annoying.

 _It_ is _my business when he’s trying to transfer me to someone else’s advising pool._

Oh. She forwarded the entire thread to One and appended: _Can you tell him not to be any stupider than he is already?_

 _I can try,_ One replied.

A few hours later, Jim sent back, _Thanks._

* * *

Perhaps it was because of the incident with Pike, but Cait Barry didn’t show up in Engineering for nearly a whole month after the _Yorktown_ took off again. One day, though, Winona was on her back under a console, rewiring it because she had the time, when she heard the XO say, “That looks like fun.”

Winona pushed herself out, sat up, and said, “It is, sir.”

“Is the transformer on the right end of the board still giving you output issues?” Cait asked, and sounded wistful.

“No,” Winona said. “I fixed that one a year ago. Sir.” She wiped her hands off on her uniform and stood up. “Sir, I know this was your department for years, but I don’t think we’re in any need of your help at the moment.” She was a few centimeters shorter than Cait but she’d been a few centimeters shorter than everyone for her entire life, and besides, she’d been a commander since Cait was probably at the Academy.

“Oh, I know,” Cait said, “but I figured if nothing was going on, I might come down and look.”

“If you’d like to schedule a time to come down and go over what we’re doing down here, that would be great.” Slowly, very slowly, she started to back Cait toward the door. “At the moment, though, we’re taking advantage of the downtime to fix some of the problems that have been annoying but not threatening. You’re welcome to read the report on it once we’ve finished, sir.”

“Of course,” Cait said. “I read all of the reports that come out of Engineering. Whoever you’ve got writing the reports does an excellent job.”

“It’s Lieutenant Patil,” Winona said. _Just a little bit more . . ._

“Ah, speaking of Nik,” Cait said, “is he still in charge of the . . . you know?” She made a face.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Winona said. Cait Barry’s dislike of stills in engine rooms was legendary. Winona had asked Phil once how he managed to overlook that flaw in her personality, and he’d snorted and shook his head. “But thank you very much for stopping by, Commander. It’s nice to know that you still take an interest in your old department.” She backed Cait up just another step and the XO was in the hallway; Winona hit a button to make the door close and to lock it temporarily.

It rang immediately, and Winona blithely ignored it, returning to her position under the console. Her personal comm buzzed a couple times, but she ignored that, too. If something was actually wrong, there was the intercom.

A half hour later or so, Winona’s comm buzzed again; she checked it this time. After deleting several textcomms from Cait that she declined to read, she found the newest one was from Phil. _So Cait just came in here and railed for about ten minutes about how the ‘new’ chief engineer had no respect for authority and had kicked her out of Engineering._

_\--And?_

_I asked her what she was doing in Engineering, and when she didn’t have an answer that wasn’t ‘poking around,’ I said, well, good for Winona._

_\--I’m sure she didn’t like that answer._

_Actually, she stared at me for a moment and then burst out laughing. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about her anymore._

_\--Oh, good._

* * *

Winona really liked the _Yorktown’s_ short mission format; she enjoyed the lack of commitment to a five-year mission, and she really didn’t mind seeing Earth regularly. She also found it very convenient because it allowed her to keep pretty good tabs on Jim. When they returned ten months later, he was a year and a half into his studies; “halfway done,” he insisted.

“Oh?” she said. They were eating lunch together this time.

“Captain Pike told me it would take me four years,” Jim said, shrugging. “I don’t need four years.”

“Your father needed four years,” she said. “I needed four years. Even Captain Pike needed four years.”

“You all were seventeen or eighteen when you got to the Academy,” he said. “I was twenty-two.”

“Well, all right,” she said.

She saw Pike once, when she met Jim for lunch a second time; he and Jim were talking. Winona stayed at a distance and gave Pike a polite but frosty nod; in return, she got the same, if a little less frosty. Jim raised his eyebrow at the exchange.

By now, she had met his roommate--she thought it was adorable that they thought she wouldn’t figure out that they weren’t just rooming together--and knew where he’d gotten that gesture, since it clearly wasn’t her eyebrow raise.

“No, seriously, what’s going on here?” Jim asked, after Pike left. “He won’t tell me.”

“What makes you think I will?” Winona asked.

“Please?”

“Oh, sweetie,” she said, “I’ve been puppy-dog-eyed at by the man from whom you inherited that particular expression. It’s not going to work on me.”

“Are you sure?”

She groaned. “You aren’t going to let this drop, are you.” Damn him. The stubbornness was pure her, whether learned or inherited.

“Nope.”

Yeah, but that smile was pure George. She sighed. “Captain Pike told me what he said to you to get you to enlist. We had a disagreement about the appropriateness of invoking George in that particular situation.”

“Oh, that,” Jim said. “Yeah. I figured out pretty early on that he’ll say practically anything if it gets him the results he wants.” He shrugged. “He’s never mentioned Dad again, if that helps. Anyway, the ‘I dare you to do better,’ that’s not why I enlisted.”

His impression of Pike wasn’t all that great, but Winona didn’t bother commenting. “Why, then?”

He shrugged again. “I’m not sure, but that wasn’t it.”

She heard the lie of omission, but didn’t call him on it. “I don’t suppose it matters why you’re here, as long as you’re enjoying it and doing well.”

“Yeah,” he said. “So that’s it? You’re just pissed because of what he said to recruit me?”

She sat back in her chair. “I would think you’d be pissed, too. I remember a certain conversation we had about your father being a human being and not a symbol, just a year ago.”

“But he doesn’t see Dad as a symbol,” Jim said.

“You said he hadn’t mentioned George to you since the night he recruited you.” She could feel the fizz of annoyance running along her spine.

“He hasn’t,” he said. “I read his dissertation, though, and that makes it pretty clear.”

“Oh?”

“You never read it?”

“I don’t need to,” she said, voice sharp. “I was there.”

“Well, I know, but--” Jim pulled out his padd, poked at it for a moment with his stylus, and said, “There. I sent you the unredacted version.”

“Are you supposed to have that?” she asked.

“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,” he said with a shrug, and slouched back down in his chair.

* * *

Later that evening, she shuffled Pike’s dissertation into a folder of other things she didn’t want to think about. But two weeks after that--when she was unpacking her duffel in her quarters on the _Yorktown_ just after they took off--she found the padd with the video of Pike that Phil had given her. She held it for a long moment and stared. It was one of the inexpensive disposable padds that people kept around for the purpose of passing around small pieces of data, and she wouldn’t mind having another blank one, but she couldn’t bring herself to delete the vid without watching it first.

She sighed, cursed herself, and hit ‘play.’

The screen lit up with a tiny Chris Pike; he smiled before he started talking. “Phil,” he said, and his voice sounded strange through the padd’s cheap speakers. “So about that complaint I had last week that all the recruits I was getting were lockstep thinkers likely only to do exactly what the establishment wants.” He laughed, low and self-deprecating. “Two days ago I ended up with a surly, recently-divorced, possibly-alcoholic doctor--you’d _love_ him. His name is Leonard McCoy and I could barely understand the titles of some of his research. I attached his résumé; you can decipher it for me.”

Winona smiled. Ah, Dr. McCoy. She liked him, but then again, ‘surly’ and ‘possibly-alcoholic’ were two of her favorite traits in friends.

“And then last night--” He rolled his eyes. “It’s a long story, but of all the people in all the gin joints in the world, I ran across Jim Kirk--yes, _that_ Jim Kirk--and somehow figured out the right carrot to dangle to get him to join up, too.”

Pike smiled again. “He’s not maybe what I expected, or what you might expect, having met Sam Kirk, but he’s got Winona’s sarcasm by the bucketful.”

She hadn’t known that Pike and apparently Phil had met Sam at one point. Huh. And by the _bucketful_?

“Anyway, we’ll see. You know I’ll keep you posted, probably long past anything you might be interested in. Tell me what you think of McCoy, if you’re bored. Pike out.”

The vid screen blanked, and she stared at it for a moment more before hitting ‘play’ again.

* * *

Later, Winona snagged a bottle of Sixty-Eight and, after a half hour or so of going back and forth in her mind, finally opened Pike’s dissertation.

_George Samuel Kirk, Sr., was born and raised in the mostly-rural Iowa town of Riverside, and often used the ‘Iowa farmboy’ stereotype to great effect. Indeed, commanders, fellow cadets, and his wife Winona all recall the initial jolt of surprise they felt when he first changed from his good-natured country-bred persona to the pin-sharp, authoritative, model Starfleet officer he later came to embody._

She smiled. It was true, and for that matter, the reason she’d pretty much pinned him down and ripped his clothes off the first time.

_Despite that, his interpersonal warmth and willingness to mentor younger officers and cadets never changed. . . ._

Four hours later, she was completely drunk, tears running down her face, curled in on herself. It was so obvious, to her, and probably to no one else alive, that Chris Pike had _known_ George, probably loved the man. No. Jim was right. George certainly wasn’t just a symbol to him.

_In that moment, though, when the command of the ship transferred, Kirk slid seamlessly into the role. Survivor interviews show that he switched chairs with no hesitation and began barking out orders that, models tend to show, bought the ship between 0.96 and 2.38 more minutes than had Kirk used the textbook-recommended maneuvers. A complete listing of the models is available in Appendix B. . . ._

She still had another hundred and fifty pages to go, but it could wait.

It took her two more sessions to finish, but she was glad she did.

* * *

**TO:** pike.chr@starfleet.fed  
 **FROM:** kirk.winona@starfleet.fed  
 **SUBJECT:** George

I finally read your dissertation, twenty years late.

Well done.

\--

 **TO:** kirk.winona@starfleet.fed  
 **FROM:** pike.chr@starfleet.fed  
 **SUBJECT:** RE: George

Thank you. You have no idea how much that means to me.

* * *

Winona stood in front of Number One’s door, holding two pints of ice cream and two spoons--the good stuff, not replicated. She’d picked it up at their last stopover at a starbase and had been hoarding it for something like this. It took her a moment or two before she could work up the gumption to hit the annunciator, but she finally did.

One answered the door a moment later, still wearing her uniform, but holding a glass of red wine. Winona held up the ice cream, and One stepped aside and let her in. “Izzy’s?” One asked, naming the ice cream place on Starbase XIX.

“Only the best,” Winona said.

One chose the pint of Mexican Chocolate Fiesta, leaving Winona the Midnight Snack, which suited her just fine. “Not that I’m not appreciative,” One said, a few bites in, “but I do suspect you aren’t here merely to share this with me.”

Winona nodded. “I think,” she said, and stopped.

One waited and didn’t try to hurry her; Winona didn’t know if she appreciated that or hated it. She took another breath, and said, “If you’re still willing to convince me that Chris Pike is worth forgiving, I think I’m willing to hear it.”

“Okay.” One smiled, and folded her legs under her. “May I ask what prompted this?”

“I read his dissertation, finally,” Winona said. “It--filled in a few of the blanks.”

“And left others,” One said. “Ah.” She took another spoonful of ice cream and ate it slowly. “I don’t know where to start. He was my captain for almost ten years, my friend for nearly the entire time; more for a few years in the middle there.” She pinned Winona with a glare over the pint container. “Not that that’s particularly any of your business.”

Winona held her spoon and ice cream up in surrender. “I wasn’t asking about that.”

“I know,” One said, and sighed. “Maybe you should tell me what you remember of him.”

“Have you seen pictures of him when he was in his early twenties?” Winona said. “He was, well, blond, for one thing. Not blonde like me.” She pulled out the end of her ponytail and looked at it--same color it had always been. “Dark blond. He was still tripping over his own feet and his tongue and if I hadn’t known better, I would have been very surprised that he’d managed to make it as high as lieutenant at that point. Smart, obviously, and polite, but he still managed to say about eight stupid things before breakfast each day. Metaphorically speaking.”

“Hm,” One said. “I’ve never seen him like that before. Captain Pike always knows what to say, sometimes to the point of being exasperating. Well, except--never mind.”

Winona smiled. Most people lost any ability to talk at the same moment. “I’m given to understand that he was on the _Kelvin_ with us for his three months back before that but I don’t remember him at all. Of course, I was in the awful, hormonal-mess, constant-nausea part of pregnancy at that time, so I’m not sure I remember George during that time, but still. I do remember George complaining about him sometimes.”

“What did George say?” One asked.

“Oh, just that there was a baby cadet following him around and asking annoying questions. By the end, George thought Pike might actually be useful someday, so there’s that.”

“Someday,” One said.

“Oh, he was probably nicer than that,” Winona said. “George loved nothing more than being a mentor, and, for that matter, a father.” She blinked and looked away for a moment, and then took a decisive bite of her ice cream. “Anyway,” she said, “yeah. I really didn’t believe that Lieutenant Pike turned into Captain Pike until, well, I had proof.”

“Strange,” One said. “Very different from what know.” She dug out another perfectly hemispherical spoonful and ate it before saying, “Well, you know his service record.”

Winona nodded.

“You know he’s got my friendship and loyalty, as well as Phil’s and Cait’s, and practically everyone else who has ever served with him.”

She nodded again.

“I don’t know if I have anything else to say other than that.”

“Yeah,” Winona said. Because, really, what else was there to say?

“Now,” One said, “after this conversation, do you think we’re close enough friends to trade pints?” 

She sounded so hopeful that Winona laughed, and handed over the Midnight Snack.

* * *

The _Yorktown_ ’s next stop on Earth was almost exactly a year after the last one. It got extended to a full six weeks, due to some much-needed upgrades to the warp core, and she was looking forward to seeing what the ship could do after that. Commander Barry had whisked the overseeing of the task out of Winona’s hands, claiming it was her one allowed interference a year, and Winona let it go gracefully. It just gave her more time off to go visit her grandkid--well, grandkid and a half: Aurelan was pregnant again and due in early March.

Her supposedly-yearly comms with Jim had turned into weekly comms, if she was in range, especially as the math got more complicated. He swore he was going to graduate at the end of the year, and the class schedules he’d chosen attested to that fact. More than once she asked him why he wasn’t going into engineering, with a head for equations the way he did, and the answer she finally believed was, “Math makes my brain quiet down.”

She’d only nodded in response.

Jim actually met her when the ship landed, but it was eight in the evening on a Wednesday, and convenient for his schedule. She had to go through debriefing, but met him for a beer afterward--and wasn’t it strange for her to go out drinking with her baby son? Nonetheless, he was almost twenty-five, and although his taste in beer was _execrable_ (seriously, Budweiser Classic? Might as well be drinking cow piss), the ever-amusing Dr. McCoy joined them. At least _he_ had decent taste in beverages; he and Winona got sidetracked into a discussion about various types of whiskeys that finally had Jim saying, “Hey, she’s _my_ mom.”

Winona just laughed and paid off their tab.

A day or two later, she took the scenic route back from lunch. The weather was surprisingly decent; the sky was an almost-unreal shade of blue, and it was pleasantly cool. She hummed under her breath as she headed for her temp quarters, but stopped short when she came to a corner and who was waiting at the transit stop but Chris Pike.

“Captain Pike,” she said.

“It’s still Chris,” he said, voice carefully neutral, his face pleasantly blank.

“Then it’s still Winona,” she said.

He nodded.

Winona supposed she didn’t blame him for his caution; the last word she’d ever said to him was ‘bastard.’ Still. She didn’t have a ton of practice at this next part. Holding grudges, sure. Releasing them, not so much. “Ah,” she said, and inhaled through her nose.

He waited.

“You want to try this over again?” she said, after another thirty seconds or so.

“This conversation?” he asked.

“No,” she said. Damn, he was going to make it hard on her, wasn’t he? She probably deserved it. “More like the last two years’ worth of non-conversations.”

“Okay,” he said, and smiled.

And it was as simple as that.

Well, no, of course it wasn’t. They both tiptoed around each other for a couple weeks, only interacting in events that included the whole group, but one day, at lunch, Winona saw Chris eating alone, and she only hesitated for a few seconds before going up to his table and saying, “Can I join you?”

He looked up, smiled, and said, “Of course.”

After that, it was simple.

* * *

**TO:** kirk.winona@starfleet.fed  
 **FROM:** pike.chr@starfleet.fed  
 **SUBJECT:** food?

Do you have plans for dinner this evening?

\--

 **TO:** pike.chr@starfleet.fed  
 **FROM:** kirk.winona@starfleet.fed  
 **SUBJECT:** RE: food?

No. What did you have in mind?

\--

 **TO:** kirk.winona@starfleet.fed  
 **FROM:** pike.chr@starfleet.fed  
 **SUBJECT:** RE: food?

Food. Maybe beer. Possibly live music.

\--

 **TO:** pike.chr@starfleet.fed  
 **FROM:** kirk.winona@starfleet.fed  
 **SUBJECT:** RE: food?

I could stand all of that. Meet you outside Chawla Hall at 1900 and we’ll figure the rest out?

\--

Three weeks of détente and they’d managed only two lunches together outside of the whole group. On one hand, half the point of not being mad at Chris anymore was for the comfort of Jim and their mutual friends and coworkers, so perhaps that wasn’t strange. But Winona had actually hesitated before accepting his dinner invitation. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to eat dinner with him; she still remembered the first portion of the disastrous Grumpy’s dinner as being, well, not disastrous. He was pleasant company; witty, well-read, up-to-date on politics and ‘Fleet gossip, and not difficult to look at.

No. Not at all. She shoved _that_ particular observation as far down as it would go--which wasn’t very far--and leaned against a tree. The weather had taken a turn for the worse; it was barely above freezing and there was some sort of ‘wintry mix’ precipitation, but she had a reputation to protect, and had only acknowledged the cold and wet by wearing a sweater under her jacket.

Chris appeared a minute or two later, wearing a ridiculous knit cap, in addition to his heavy coat and what looked like a fisherman’s sweater. “Let’s get out of the cold,” he suggested, and they stepped into the lobby of Chawla Hall for a moment. He took off the hat, which left his hair in disarray, tufts sticking up and curls starting to form around the edges. She couldn’t help but smile.

He noticed, and shook his head, trying to flatten his hair down. “I’m sure it’s sticking up all over the place, but I walked halfway across campus to get here. The hat was necessary. What kind of food are you in the mood for?”

“I could eat pretty much anything,” she said.

“Yes, but what do you want?”

Winona consulted with her stomach, and said, “I really don’t care. Is there anything you want to eat?”

“Anything warm,” he said.

“That leaves out ice cream for dinner, I guess,” she said.

He laughed. “True. What kind of pizza do you want?”

“Who says I want pizza?”

“You wouldn’t even pick a type of food. I picked the type. You get to pick the specifics.”

“That’s fair,” she said.

“Of course it is,” he said with a grin. “So, good pizza, or good bad pizza? Deep dish, New York-style, Andorian-Bolian fusion gourmet?”

They settled on Neapolitan and ended up at Punch, splitting a Milanese pizza, a Greek salad, and an order of extra focaccia. Chris dunked his focaccia--and the crust of his pizza, and one of Winona’s unfinished crusts--in what looked like half a bottle of balsamic vinegar, precariously balanced and constantly refreshed in a tiny puddle of olive oil.

“How on earth did you do that? I’m fairly certain the surface tension of olive oil shouldn’t hold that much vinegar.” She poked at it with a fingertip.

“Lots of practice. Don’t do that; it’ll--” He sighed, as the balsamic vinegar ran all over the plate.

“You were done eating,” she said, and he rolled his eyes.

A jazz trio was setting up in the corner, piano, bass, and drums; the instruments were all Terran and acoustic, but the pianist was Andorian. Zie started playing for a soundcheck a few minutes later, a tune very familiar to Winona.

“Ahh,” she said. “George loved this song. He tried to convince me it should be the first dance at our wedding but I put my foot down. At dancing in public, that is.”

“Hm,” Chris said, and she turned to look at him. He looked--frozen, as if he had no idea what to say, or maybe was afraid of what she was going to say next.

“We’re going to have to mention him at some point,” she said. “It’s been twenty-four years. I’m not walking wounded the way I was during the interview.” She shrugged. “I miss him sometimes, but not in a way that renders me catatonic or anything.”

“I miss him too, once in a while,” he said. “He was the first useful mentor I had.”

“Right,” she said, a frisson of anticipation coming over her. She almost never got to do this, almost never got to talk with someone who had known George and thought of him as a human being. “You--your dissertation. It was--you never made him out to be something he wasn’t.” She swallowed. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said.

“It’s obvious that you,” she said, and stopped. _Loved him_ , but she couldn’t say that, so she made an indistinct gesture. “Anyway, yes.”

“It wasn’t George,” Chris said, barely audible over the music.

And, just like that, all the pieces fell together.

“I don’t remember you,” she said, a long moment later. “I know you were on the _Kelvin_ for three months but I can’t picture you at all during that time. It’s not just because of pregnancy brain, is it.”

It wasn’t a question, but he answered anyway. “No. One of the things I did for Pzilf--” the XO at the time “--was make up the duty roster, which meant I always knew where you would be and could put myself as far away as possible.”

“And I wasn’t eating in the commissary at the time because it made me nauseated,” she said.

“George would occasionally send me to deliver your meals,” he said. “I’d leave them on your desk when you stepped out.”

“All that trouble,” Winona said.

“Cut me some slack,” he said. “I was nineteen. You were ten years older, married to my supervisor, and pregnant. I would have done a lot more than rearrange the duty roster to avoid you.”

“All this time?”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. “Yes, and no,” he said, and looked away. “More of an acknowledgment, I suppose, of what could be, were the situation entirely different.”

“Yeah,” she said, and her heart started pounding, the center of her palms aching. “Same here.” Because it was true, and made her want to jump out of her skin, although she didn’t know if it was with desire--because she definitely felt that--or fear--she felt that too--or what.

Chris looked at her sharply.

“Not when you were nineteen,” she said. “When you did the interview.”

“It was a year after,” he said, but some of the lines in his forehead smoothed out. _After George died_ , he meant. Five years after his training stint on the _Kelvin_.

“Yeah,” Winona said. “It--I--it was too soon.” Fuck, it had been, and she remembered the aching guilt as much as the completely-inappropriate desire. One of those, though, she still felt--and maybe it wasn't inappropriate anymore. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then opened them again. “Are you skipping over the important part of that confession?”

“If it’s what you want,” he said, very carefully.

“It is most emphatically _not_ what I want,” she said. She slugged down the last of her beer and stood, holding out one hand. “Let’s go.”

He stood and dusted off his hands before he took hers. “Where are we going?”

“Literally, or metaphorically?” She headed for the door; he followed, still holding her hand.

“Either.”

“Literally, your place, I suppose.” She looked at him briefly, to make sure he was still on board. “I’m in temp housing.”

He nodded.

“Metaphorically . . .” She shrugged, and let the door to Punch’s swing closed behind her. “The situation is entirely different now.”

He smiled, quick and bright. “It is, isn’t it?”

“Yes. That is,” she said, momentarily hesitant, “if it’s what you want.”

“It is,” he said, using her hand to pull her closer, “most emphatically what I want.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, even as she wrapped her arms around his neck and stood on her toes. “Does that usually work for you?”

“No, not really,” he said, lips almost against hers, and then leaned down to kiss her.

He tasted like garlic and balsamic vinegar and the beer he’d had with dinner, and a few things she didn’t recognize, but after a few moments, she didn’t notice any of it--only noticed his mouth, and tongue, and his hands on her waist, warm and broad.

“Holy shit,” she said, long moments later, as she sank back onto her heels. “If you can kiss like that, I suppose it doesn’t matter how silly your lines are.”

“I’ve heard that before,” he said, equal parts smug and chagrined.

Winona laughed. “Come on; let’s go. It’s too cold to stand around kissing on street-corners.”

“I hadn’t even noticed,” he said, and she smiled.

It didn’t take that long to get back to Chris’s place, on the third floor of Glenn Hall. His apartment was small, military-neat--both of which she expected--and painted a strange shade of purplish-gray, which she did not. Not important, though. She toed off her shoes by the door, as did he, and then turned expectantly to look at him.

“Would you like something to drink?” he asked.

She gave a half-smile, and shook her head. “Nervous?” she asked.

“A little,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Not about--this.” She gestured between them. “More about what comes after.”

“Breakfast?” he said.

“And then what?”

He sighed. “I don’t know if this is going to sound pathetic or romantic, but after nearly thirty years, Winona, I’ll take whatever I can have.”

Romantic. Definitely romantic. _Shut it, you_ , Winona told the sappy part of her brain. “So you’d be okay with this being just one night?”

He shrugged.

“Well, I wouldn’t,” she said, awareness blooming where it hadn’t been a mere moment before. “Fuck it. I have no idea how this is going to work, but we can figure that out later, right?”

“I think so,” he said, and they met halfway.

Jesus, she could kiss him all day and all night, if he kept this up. Well, not that she wanted to stop at first base, really, but _damn_.

“Bedroom’s through there,” he said, indicating a door behind him, and they half-walked, half-stumbled into the room.

Chris had his hands up her sweater before she could get to his, and just the feel of his hands against her skin was electric. She found his mouth again, and his hands settled against her ribs as he switched his attention to the kiss. His thumbs stroked just under the bottom edge of her bra, and as she pulled away, one shifted forward to brush between her breasts.

She grinned. "Back hook. You think I wear Starfleet-issued bras off duty?"

"Some women do," he said, and leaned in to nibble on her earlobe.

"Mmm," she said, and buried her nose behind his ear, breathing in garlic and basil and something faintly citrus-y, probably from his shower gel. As he found the hooks on the back of her bra, something floated up through the haze of desire threatening to take over, and she said, "Wait."

Immediately he stilled before straightening and pulling his hands away. She grabbed his hands before he got too far, and said, "No, not--I didn't mean stop touching me, or go stand in the corner. It's just--look, is there anything I need to know before we do this?"

"I'm clean," he said. "I can't get you pregnant, at least not right now, although I suspect that's less of a worry than disease."

"It would take rather a lot of medical assistance," Winona said, lips twisting. Those days were long since over.

"Also," Chris said, with a pause so short that she barely registered it, "don't grab the hair on the back of my head."

She nodded. "Okay."

"This is fine," he said, cupping one hand around the back of her head. "This is not." He wound his fingers into her hair and tugged gently--not enough that it hurt, but enough that she knew exactly what had happened. His next words confirmed. "Especially not if--when--I'm going down on you."

She nodded again. That was why she'd asked, after all, and she had no desire to invoke memories of torture.

"You?"

"Clean," she said. "Other than that, no knives, no wax." She kept her tone light.

"Duly noted," he said. "There's a pocketknife in the top drawer of my dresser, on the left side. I use it for hiking or camping, things like that. Do you want me to move it?"

She shook her head. "No, that's fine." It might not have been fine if she would have discovered it on her own, but now that she knew it was there, she could forget about it. "Can we get back to the part where you were about to prove that you can undo a bra single-handed?"

"Sounds good to me," he said, and tugged her sweater over her head.

She returned the favor, but took his undershirt with it. "Hello there," she said, and backed up a few inches so she could see him properly. Twirling one finger in the air, she looked at him expectantly, and he held his hands up and spun around slowly. "Nice," she said. "Very nice."

And by ‘nice,’ she meant ‘really, really hot.’ She hadn’t expected him to be young, and he wasn’t, from the gray in his chest hair to a few scars attesting to many years in active duty, but they certainly didn’t make him a damn bit less attractive.

"Thank you," he said. "Now you?"

Winona spun around herself, but lifted her hands with her index fingers pointed up and alternated raising and lowering them.

When she faced him again, he looked incredibly amused. "First, you're wearing too much clothing. Second, did you just do the Hokey Pokey?"

"That is what it's all about," she said solemnly.

Chris laughed, and slid his fingers under the hem of her camisole, raising it slowly. "What's next," he said, "the Chicken Dance?"

"If that's your thing," she said, and gasped as his nails scraped gently against her shoulderblades. "Ohhhh."

He pulled the camisole off over her head, and threw it aside. On the way back down, he did, as a matter of fact, undo her bra one-handed, and she caught it in one hand before it fell. Throwing it at the chair, she lifted her chin and watched him look at her.

She was well aware that she was pushing sixty, had had two children, and had generally eschewed cosmetic work, but from the look on his face, she might as well have been twenty-nine again.

"You're beautiful," he said, finally raising his eyes to her own.

Winona turned around again, this time making beaks out of her hands and opening and closing them, and Chris laughed. Grabbing her belt loops, he pulled her against him and started undoing the fly of her jeans, hands working in the nearly-nonexistent space between them. Once he'd pushed her jeans down off her hips, she wriggled a bit to get them to fall the rest of the way on their own, and started working on his pants.

He gasped as her knuckles brushed against his skin, just inside the hollow of his hip. She backed up just enough to finish quickly and finally, after they both stepped out of the pooled fabric, _finally_ they were both fully naked.

It only took a moment for him to drag the sheets and blankets down to the foot of the bed and to order the lights down to thirty percent before he held out a hand and guided her to sit and then lie down on the bed. A moment later he joined her and skimmed a hand down her side, from her shoulder to mid-thigh, and she laughed and pulled him in for a kiss.

He slung a thigh between hers and, with a hand on her rear, encouraged her to wriggle closer, so that they were pressed together from lips to ankles, nearly. “Mmmph,” she said, and hooked her calf behind his knees.

“Good mmmph?” he asked, nibbling on her earlobe.

“Mmm, yes,” she said, and scratched her nails lightly down his back. He gasped again, and she pushed back just far enough that she could run her nails lightly over his shoulders.

“Oh, keep doing that,” he said, barely above a whisper.

She _hmmed_ again and pushed his shoulder until he lay flat on his back, and she was straddling his hips. His knees were up, so she tucked her rear end against the creases between his hips and thighs--conveniently putting him _just_ where she wanted him--and leaned over, scratching lightly through his chest hair. He tipped his chin up and arched slightly, and she said, “Gorgeous.”

“Glad you--think so,” he said, and she rolled her eyes.

Starting at his neck, she ran her nails over his skin--not hard enough to leave even a faint mark--down his shoulders, down his arms, over the soft skin of his forearms and across the centers of his palms, before going back up and then coming down his chest, following the line of hair so it wouldn’t tickle. She stopped when she ran into her own legs, and started back at his neck again, this time with flat palms.

Chris watched her for a while, and then, when she was spreading her fingers over his ribs, covered her hands with his and then tugged. “Come here,” he said. “What you’re doing is nice-- _very_ nice--but you’re too far away.”

“I’m too far away?” she said, squeezing her thighs against his hips.

“Well, okay,” he said, “your breasts are too far away.” He pushed his hips up against hers a little bit, and she laughed, leaning forward and walking her hands up to the pillow.

“Close enough?” she asked.

“For now,” he said, and brushed the outside of her breasts with his fingertips, gently.

Winona closed her eyes and bit her lip and managed to keep back the moan, even as he cupped her breasts in broad, warm palms. When he lifted his head and flicked his tongue against her nipple, though, then she did moan, and leaned over so he could have better access.

And access he did--tongue hot and just the slightest bit rough, lips soft in contrast, and just the slightest graze of teeth. He couldn’t have done better if she’d ordered off the _à la carte_ menu, she thought, and laughed.

He raised his eyebrows at her, and she smiled and rolled off, landing next to him. “Your turn,” she said.

“I can work with that,” he said, and sat up to kneel between her legs.

He started the same way she did, with fingernails, but as she was too ticklish that didn’t last long. “Stop,” she said, laughing and squirming.

He did, smiling, and switching to open hands, and enough pressure to keep it all pleasure. Still, though, it was a tease, as were his lips below her ear, and his erection against her. Once he’d traced the shape of her body with his hands and lips, though, he leaned down, kissed her until she forgot everything but the feel of his mouth on hers, and then scooted down the bed.

“This okay?” he asked, and kissed the inside of her thigh.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, _ohhhh_.” She clenched her fists in the sheets and held on for dear life.

He had her begging in--she had _no_ way of telling how long, actually; it felt like immediately and also maybe four hours later. But she was sobbing out his name before too long. “Oh, God, Chris, _please_.”

The bastard, of course, just chuckled and doubled down, tongue circling at exactly the same speed. A moment later, one finger slid inside her, carefully, just the tip, and she gasped. “Oh, God, yes, please, don’t stop, more, fuck!”

The words were falling out of her mouth without really any thought or effort on her part, and finally--she swore he’d been down there forever-- _finally_ he gave up on trying to draw it out any longer. Or something, because all of a sudden he was doing _exactly_ what she needed and it was building to that final climb and then everything exploded into a thousand points of light and she shook helplessly.

“Oh, my God,” she said weakly a few minutes later. “Damn.”

“I presume you enjoyed yourself?” he said, head pillowed on her hip, and she shivered just at the sound of his voice.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think you might have to try again.”

He looked up at her, raised an eyebrow, and then ducked his head again.

The second orgasm came even faster, as they often did, and Winona tapped him on the shoulder when she was coherent again and said, “I honestly didn’t mean that as a challenge, but I am not going to say no any time you want to do that.”

He smiled, and crawled up the bed to kiss her. “Convenient, as I like how you taste.”

“Maybe I’d like how you taste.”

Chris closed his eyes and made a quiet, desperate noise, but said, “Actually, as much as I’d love to let you find out, I’d rather--”

“Yes, that sounds good, too,” she said, and kissed his ear.

“Condoms, lube, anything else?” he asked.

She wormed a hand down between them to check, and said, “Nah, not necessary. None of it. Unless you want.”

“I’m fine without if you are,” he said, and rubbed himself against her.

She responded by wrapping her legs around his waist, and wasn’t she damn proud that she could still do that. A moment later he was working his way inside her with short, slow strokes, and she was kissing him with everything she had.

“Oh, my God,” she said, once he was all the way inside her. He paused and looked at her, and the strain was evident in his face. “No, don’t stop,” she said, and heaved a couple of breaths. “Please.”

“Well, since you--begged so--nicely,” he said, gasping, and starting moving again, long and deep, letting her feel all of him.

Winona arched under him, eyes shut, hands roaming between his shoulders, his face, and anywhere else she could reach. A couple moments later, though, he slowed down and stroked her cheek. “Damnit, I--should have asked--before,” he said. “Can you--come like this?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, opening her eyes. “I’ve come twice already and that’s enough; _trust_ me.” She could, but it wasn’t worth it right now.

“I do,” he said, smiling at her, incongruously sweet, compared to the movement of his body within hers. He leaned down to kiss her shoulder and resumed his previous pace.

She could feel when he was getting close; he started trembling and his rhythm lost its edge of control. “Close,” he warned her, a few moments later, gritted out through clenched teeth.

“Don’t hold back,” she said, because _God_ it felt good, every stroke inside her. She tightened around him, and he groaned. Resting his forehead on the pillow, he snapped his hips against hers, just short of causing pain, and breathed out her name as he came.

She held on through his orgasm and the aftershocks, rubbing his back lightly, and a minute or so later, he withdrew gently and rolled off her to lay on his back, gasping. “You okay?” he asked.

“Hell, yes,” she said, and he laughed. “You?” she asked.

Chris turned to face her, and ran a hand down her side. “Yes,” he said, deep and obviously heartfelt. He put a hand on her cheek and leaned in to kiss her, lips and tongue strangely gentle.

Winona stopped him after a couple minutes, very reluctantly. “I’m leaking,” she said, “and there’s enough of a wet spot already.”

He smiled. “Go clean up.”

“Do you want me to bring you tissues or something?” she asked as she stood.

“No; I’ve got some.”

He was waiting, sitting in the middle of the bed, when she got back, sheet pooled in his lap, pillows fluffed and squared up at the top. “You’re staying, right?” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “I am way too old to fuck and run,” she said.

He smiled, and scooted down to lay on the bed, holding the sheet up for her. She slid in and lay on her side, watching him, her nose only a few inches from his. “Hi,” she said.

“Come here,” he said, and they rearranged themselves so Winona was flat on her back, Chris against her side, his head on her shoulder and one arm across her midsection. She played with the fine hairs on the back of his neck for a moment before asking, “This okay?”

“It’s fantastic,” he said. “Don’t stop.”

She smiled, and brought her other hand up to cover his.

“So, more than one night?” he said, only the barest thread of diffidence in his voice.

“At least two,” she said, and felt the rumble of his laughter against her side.

“You’re on Earth for, what, another three weeks?”

“Something like that,” she said. “I’ll be back in May for Jim’s graduation.”

“And I’ll be setting off in the _Enterprise_ shortly after that. But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s try the next three weeks and then see where we are, then, okay?”

“That sounds fair,” she said, and yawned.

“Of course it is,” he said, and yawned as well, his jaw cracking against her shoulder. “Ow. And on that note.”

“Go to sleep,” she said, chuckling.

He raised his face for a kiss, and she granted it before closing her eyes, a smile still on her face.

* * *

The next morning she woke up slowly, enjoying the long, drawn-out moment. They’d apparently shifted position at some point in the night, because she was curled up on her left side, Chris behind her, one hand cupping her breast, his face pressed to the back of her neck. She could feel him, semi-hard, against her rear, and resisted the impulse to squirm against him. He was still asleep, snoring gently in her ear. It was rather endearing, actually; compared to George, who sounded like he’d swallowed a diesel combustion engine, it was positively adorable. She’d shared beds with a few other snorers over the years, but no one had compared to George Kirk. She hoped for Dr. McCoy’s sake that Jim had not inherited that. He hadn’t snored when he was young, but things could change.

A few minutes later, Chris stirred, the snores subsiding into normal breathing. “Mmm, computer, what time is it?” he said, or something close enough that the computer answered anyway.

“It is 0635,” it said. “You have a meeting at 0800.”

“Plenty of time,” he said, and kissed Winona’s shoulder.

“To go back to sleep?” she asked.

“If you want,” he said, but something in his tone made her think that he knew full well that she didn’t want any more sleep.

“Or,” she said, and pushed her rear back against him.

“Let’s go with that one,” he said, and kissed her shoulder again, tongue against her skin. His thumb brushed over her nipple, and she shivered.

The position put him in the perfect place to whisper a stream of endearments, from the sweet to dirty, directly in her ear. Between that and his hand on her breasts and his hips moving slowly against her, she was panting and whimpering in an embarrassingly-short period of time. “Chris,” she said, pleading; she canted her hips to the side, and he chuckled.

She would have been embarrassed that he’d managed to take her apart so thoroughly after just one night together, but it just wasn’t worth it. “Please?” she said.

He sucked in a fast breath, and trailed his fingers down the length of her body, to stroke her hip, the inside of her thigh, and-- _finally_ \--her cunt, stroking along her labia, and then between.

“Mmmf,” she said, and turned her head as far as she could for a kiss; it was messy, and a little off-center, but she didn’t _care_ \--he had his fingers on her clit and her nerves were sparking and _oh_ it was good.

After a few minutes, though, she realized that as good as it was, it wasn’t particularly _fast_ , and time was of the essence. “This is where lube may be helpful,” she said, and he stopped.

“Am I hurting you?” he asked.

“No, no--it’ll just speed things up a lot,” she said.

“Ah,” he said. “It’s on your side.”

She scooted over a few inches, opened the drawer, and picked through a pile of condoms and multiple types of lube until she found the kind she wanted. Moving back into his arms, she grabbed his hand and squirted a dollop of lube onto his fingers.

He held it carefully for a moment, obviously waiting for it to warm up to skin temperature, but she laughed. “Go ahead,” she said. “I don’t mind the cold.”

“Hm,” he said, but spread it carefully on and around her clit.

She gasped. “What,” she said. “Have you never-- _ohhh_ \--ice cubes?”

“No,” he said, sounding amused. “But you seem to be enjoying this.”

“Yes,” she said. “ _Oh_ yes.” It was getting almost impossible to stay still, so she hooked one leg back over his for something to strain against.

He apparently understood, as he stretched out the arm under her head to grasp her hand. She squeezed it, hard, but he just squeezed back and sped up his motions.

Oh, _fuck_ , he was _good_ at this. She could feel herself getting close already, and normally it took a little longer than _that_. “Don’t stop,” she said, wishing she didn’t sound so desperate.

“Of course I won’t stop,” he said, lips next to her ear, his voice low and dark in a way that-- _oh_ \--shot through her like a Risan cocktail.

She jerked, once, but that wasn’t it; _so_ close, though. _So_ close. Just a little bit more--if only he’d--or maybe--

“Winona,” he breathed in her ear, and _damned_ if it didn’t do it for her.

She cried out as stars burst on her field of vision. When she came back to herself, his fingers were still between her legs, but not moving, and his face was buried in her shoulder. “Mmm,” she said. “Damn.”

“I assume that’s a good thing.”

“Like you could have missed that orgasm,” she said, grinning.

Chris made a small noise, somewhere between a ‘hm’ and an ‘ahh,’ that was clearly self-pleased, but didn’t actually say anything.

She shook her head, pulled his hand off of her carefully, and grabbed the lube again. “Here,” she said, portioning more out. “That’s for you. And--” Another pile, this time on her own fingers. “--this is for me, and then I figure you know what to do.”

She couldn’t see his face, but the smirk was self-evident. Reaching down between her legs, she prepared herself, and then wiped her hand off on the sheet. “I’m ready,” she said.

“Mmm, good,” he said. She re-angled her hips, and he reached around to guide himself, and then they were sliding together and _oh_ , the day she’d discovered lube was a wonderful day.

Also, for that matter, the day she decided she didn’t hate Chris Pike, because if he was always like this in bed, she was coming back for more. A lot.

But his hand was just short of bruising on her hip, and his breath was hot against the back of her neck, and inside her-- _ohh_ , she liked this position. Maybe not for orgasm purposes, but it was still a lot of fun and he was hitting all the right places.

At least for her. “This working for you?” she asked, even though she couldn’t have explained exactly why.

“It’s a little close to the last time,” he admitted. “It’s probably going to take a while longer.”

“Not a problem for me,” she said. She’d picked a lube that wouldn’t absorb too quickly. “Do you want to switch positions to something where you have more leverage?”

“Do you mind?”

“No, of course not,” she said.

He withdrew carefully and said, “Missionary again?”

She nodded, and rolled onto her back; he settled between her legs, and threaded his arms under hers, leaning in for a kiss. “Mm,” he said, smiling. “Now you have to deal with my morning breath.”

“Yeah,” she said, “but I get to watch you.”

His smile widened for a moment, but then subsided into a more neutral expression as he re-settled himself and sank into her again.

And, oh, this was nice, too--she could watch his face, as she hadn’t really thought to last night. He closed his eyes after a minute or so, and she put her hands on his shoulders so she could feel the muscles working. She loved this part, she really did; loved watching her partners chase orgasms for their own sake, as much as she liked having her own. But watching Chris, from mere inches away, all shields down, not paying attention to what he said or what he did, was--

\--revealing.

Especially when he opened his eyes and smiled at her. “You feel so wonderful,” he said.

“So do you,” she said, and returned the smile.

His smile grew wider, and he leaned down for another kiss. She returned it, lips and tongue and teeth clashing until he pulled back, panting, and buried his face in her shoulder. “Can’t--concentrate,” he said, muffled, and she grinned. “Do you--need anything?”

“No no no,” she said. “We’ll work on it later. Let _go_.”

He groaned, and did.

When he collapsed on top of her, she wrapped her arms around him and just held on for a long moment. Her mind ran around in circles for a few minutes, but it all came back to one inescapable fact: there was something more than just sheer physical attraction between them. And damned if she knew what was going to happen, but she also couldn’t walk out without letting him know--something.

“We’ll work on it later?” he asked, before she could say anything.

“I already told you you’re getting at least one more night,” she said.

He gave a brief chuckle, as if more was beyond him just yet.

“In all seriousness,” she said into his shoulder, “I can’t imagine feeling like I do, making love like we just did, twice, and then saying, _no, that’s it_.” Her heart sped up in her chest and her hands started shaking, but she’d gotten it out.

His arms tightened around her.

“Although I don’t know,” she said, and bit her lip. “If I can live up to twenty-eight years of whatever you’ve built up in your mind.” _Whoa._ It was a good question, but she didn’t know she was going to ask it until she did.

“You’ve already far surpassed it,” he said, lifting his head a couple inches to look at her. “Far.”

“Flatterer,” she said, but smiled; there was nothing but affection in her tone.

“It’s only the truth,” he said, and rested his head back on her shoulder.

Winona took a quick shower in his bathroom and redressed in her jeans and sweater; kissing him again, long and lingering, she left as he was shrugging into his jacket. There was something a little bit too obvious about leaving his apartment with him, although anyone who was paying attention would know she hadn’t spent the night alone, or in her own bed. She felt a broad smile spread across her face. Oh, man, she had it bad, which was _ridiculous_. Schooling her features, she walked a little faster down the hall to the stairway.

She exited the building and turned left to head to Kavandi Hall; she hadn’t gotten that far from Glenn when she heard a runner behind her. Instinctively she hugged the right side of the walkway, but the footsteps slowed and finally stopped a few feet behind her. “Mom?”

Winona stopped. It was Jim, of course; she turned to see him, dressed in shorts and a long-sleeved PT shirt. “Jim, hi,” she said. Really, she just had to brazen this one out.

“So,” he said, his inquisitive look turning into a smirk, “dinner with Pike turned into breakfast with Pike, eh?”

Her first response was, _No, we didn’t have breakfast; we were too busy,_ but luckily she didn’t say that. She didn’t bother asking how he knew she’d had dinner with Chris, either. Instead, she said, “That’s really not any of your business,” hoping her tone was harsh enough to get him to let up.

Of course not, but he inexplicably softened. “You’re right,” he said, “and I’m going to try my damndest not to be grossed out by it, but I figured out Pike had a thing for you in the second conversation we ever had. So this isn’t really unexpected.”

That was . . . strange. “It’s still not your business,” she said.

“Yeah, well,” he said. “Don’t break his heart until after I graduate and get my place on the _Enterprise_ , okay?”

Oh, shit. She hadn’t known that Jim was trying to get on the _Enterprise_ , although in hindsight, it seemed obvious. “We’re all professionals here,” she said.

“Sure,” he said. “See you later.” He loped off, passing her and turning the corner ahead. 

When she got back to her temp quarters, she sent a quick note off to Chris. _Guess who I ran into on the way home._ She downgraded the priority, though, so he wouldn’t feel compelled to read it during the meeting.

He did anyway, or at least there was an answer waiting for her when she got done changing. _Jim. I’m sorry. I should have checked my chart._

_\--You have a chart of his running schedule?_

_It’s actually two charts--he has about seven routes, and he picks which one by some variation of the Fibonacci sequence. He picks what time of day by a variation on a Mandelbrot set, and no, if you were wondering, I did not figure this out on my own (Cait helped), but once we figured it out, I joined him for a couple runs. Needless to say, he was surprised._

Winona laughed out loud at that. _I see why he respects you._

_He thinks his rebellion is new. It’s not._

_\--Of course not. I’m sorry; I’m interrupting your meeting._

_Cancelled. If I’d known that twenty minutes earlier, I would have had a much better morning._

_Ahh._ She hesitated, and then sent, _At some point we do need to talk about collateral damage from this._

_You mean Jim._

_\--He told me not to break your heart until after he has his place on the_ Enterprise.

_Audacious, isn’t he. Yeah, we should talk about it. Not via textcomm, though._

_\--Sure. Dinner?_

_Can dinner turn into breakfast?_

_\--Speaking of audacious._ Winona smiled, though.

_Tomorrow’s Saturday. I don’t have any meetings. I can cook._

_\--You can cook?_

_Well, I can make pancakes and bacon._

_\--Well, all right. Dinner at 1900 at El Loro?_

_See you then._

Well, now what? It wasn’t quite 0900; she’d had almost nothing planned for the day. She sat down and tried to catch up on bad holo programs but nothing held her attention for very long. Reading, same thing. She could probably pop over to the Academy, but that wouldn’t take her mind off of Chris or Jim. Frankly, it was time for coffee and a long conversation with a friend about all this, but who?

Whitney and Ros, the women she usually considered her best friends, were off on the _Aquino_. This wasn’t the kind of thing one discussed with one’s mother, or worse, one’s mother-in-law; Winona had only the one brother, but she hadn’t talked to Frank since she’d kicked him out of her house for his role in Jim’s destruction of George’s Corvette Stingray. Also, again, family members and sex lives didn’t mix. That left the senior staff of the _Yorktown_ , and she really wasn’t sure she wanted to discuss Chris with his best friend, his best friend’s girlfriend, or his ex-girlfriend. Zel was wonderful, really, but she was Andorian, and her views on sex and relationships weren’t exactly congruent with Starfleet regulations, as inclusive as the ‘Fleet tried to be.

She’d never really felt like she was isolated or lacking friends, but in retrospect . . . she was. Maybe. Somewhat.

Damnit. Probably Number One was the best choice here. She may not have been raised Terran human but she knew the regs better than anyone else Winona had ever met, and she was well acquainted with all parties involved. So to speak. She shook her head at herself, and sent a message to One, asking if she could speak with her on a matter that was partially personal and partially professional.

_You mean Chris. Yes, of course. How about at 1400? I’m particularly fond of the Pumphouse Creamery’s dark chocolate with roasted almonds and cocoa nibs._

Well then.

At 1400, she was standing in front of One’s door with a pint of the requested ice cream and a pint of butter brickle for herself. One answered the door holding spoons, and Winona laughed as she seated herself on one end of the tiny couch.

“Mmm,” One said a few minutes later. “I never had ice cream until I got to the Academy, and sometimes I still feel like I’m making up for the lack.”

“I had lots of ice cream,” Winona said. “My parents took me to some of the dairy festivals in the area, when I was a kid. It was amazing.”

One smiled. “But we aren’t here to talk about our childhoods.”

“No,” Winona said, and sighed. “I know you and he are close, and I know you used to--” She waved her spoon in a circle. “I don’t want to put you in an uncomfortable position, but--”

“Don’t worry about it,” One said. “What’s going on?”

Winona took another bite of ice cream and sighed again. “Last night, we--well, we went to dinner, and then . . .”

“You can skip over that part,” One said, obviously amused.

“Right,” Winona said, flushing, which was _ridiculous_ , as she was fifty-seven years old and should have stopped blushing about sex by now. “Anyway, I ran into Jim while--walking home--and he told me I shouldn’t break Chris’s heart until after Jim got his place on the _Enterprise_.”

“Oh,” One said. “Well, that makes it more interesting than I thought.” She paused for a moment. “Although, to be fair, I think the only thing that has changed in the equation is that you’re actually physically involved.”

That was a polite way to put it. But--“Wait, what?”

“Jim’s at the top of his class, from what Chris says. Since part of the deal is that Chris gets first pick of the Academy grads for the new ship, he’d likely be going to the _Enterprise_ anyway. Everyone in the ‘fleet knows what Chris wrote his dissertation on, so no one is surprised that he’s picked Jim Kirk as a protégé.”

“Yes, all right,” Winona said, “but.”

One smiled. “Well, it only gets complicated if he asks you to be his chief engineer.”

“Oh,” Winona said. “Oh, crap. I didn’t think about that. You know I won’t--”

“I know,” One said. “If you want to go, though, I’d be fine with it. I’m keeping his CMO, after all.”

“No, I seriously--haven’t thought that far ahead.” She was actually getting a bit light-headed, and set down her ice cream on the table so she could rest her head in her hands. "I haven’t had to think about this sort of thing in years, or ever, really. What if it doesn’t work out?”

“If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t,” One said. “We didn’t, he and I, but we still managed to be captain and XO for another three years after that, and we’re still friends. He’s still the person I go to if I’m having management problems.”

Winona looked up at One. “I’m not you,” she said.

“I know,” One said. “I’ve got faith in both of you, though.”

“I don’t even know how I’m supposed to extrapolate based on one night--one really, really good night, mind you--” Winona didn’t know why she felt compelled to add that, especially considering that of all the people she could be talking to in existence, Number One certainly already knew, and had the smirk to prove it. “--but I don’t--well, _fuck_.”

“If it makes you feel any better, you’re not breaking any regs, and even if you’re the chief engineer and Jim’s, what, tactical officer or something, at best there might be some weird rumbles, but you’re both the top of your pools.”

Winona knew that, intellectually, but it was still strange. “I can’t possibly make any decisions now.”

“Of course not,” One said. “It’s not the kind of decision you should make lightly.”

“Last night might have been a fluke.”

“At the risk of oversharing, Winona, I highly doubt it.”

“I didn’t mean _that_ ,” she said. “I meant the way it--we--seemed to--I don’t know. Work.”

One sighed. “I still doubt it.”

“How long have you known?”

“About what? That you’ve been involved? Since you commed me earlier. The way he feels about you? Since he commed me to ask when exactly I’d gotten you as my chief engineer a couple years ago.” One shrugged. “Again, ten years of very close interaction. How do you feel about him?”

Winona blinked. “I don’t even know,” she said. “If you would have asked me, you know, first thing--well, second thing--this morning, I would have had an answer, but now, a few hours later, it seems less--less something.”

“You like him as a person.”

“Well, yes. He’s not uncomplicated, but who is?”

“You’re attracted to him.”

Winona rolled her eyes. “Do you even need to wonder?”

One smiled. “You’ve got a few months to figure the rest out. The _Enterprise_ doesn’t officially set off until September, I think, although they’ll be finished with her in February or March sometime.”

“Okay,” Winona said. She took a deep breath, and sat up. “Okay. I can handle this.”

“Of course you can,” One said.

“I’m sorry,” Winona said. “I didn’t really mean to drop all that on you. I just--”

“I know,” One said. “I consider the ice cream perfectly sufficient repayment.”

Right now, Winona supposed she was supposed to give Number One a hug, but she’d really gotten out of the habit of touching people and she didn’t think One had ever been in the habit, so she just said, “Thanks,” and sat back in her seat.

* * *

She still wasn’t completely settled on anything by the time she met Chris for dinner. He greeted her with a kiss, but didn’t bring up anything other than the weather until they’d already placed their orders. “So, Jim,” he said. “The _Enterprise_.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I would never question your professionalism.”

“But,” he said.

“But,” she said. “I wish there were some way to guarantee that no one would look at the situation and give any of us a hard time about it.”

“In all fairness,” Chris said, “I was going to pick Jim for the ship anyway, and I’d decided that, pending future developments, after he finished his first semester with perfect grades. At that point, he barely respected me and certainly didn’t _like_ me. Every interaction we had was a test, for one or both of us. You weren’t even part of the picture yet.”

“So what happens?” she asked, and she meant, _if we work out, are you going to ask me to change ships?_

And thank goodness he was bright, because he heard what she meant, she was pretty sure, and said, “Let’s hold off making any permanent decisions until commencement, okay? Besides,” he added with a grin, “we need to make sure last night wasn’t the exception rather than the rule.”

Winona rolled her eyes and asked the ceiling, “Is this what all younger men are like?”

Chris laughed.

* * *

It wasn’t, as a matter of fact, the exception.

Afterward, he wrapped his arms around her as she lay on top of him, still trembling, and murmured words she could barely hear over her own heartbeat.

At moments like that, she could hardly doubt that it was well more than just sex.

* * *

The three weeks before the _Yorktown_ left went quickly; she spent Christmas with Jim and Sam and Aurelan and Peter, as she always did when she was on Earth, but New Year’s was with Chris, One, Phil, and Cait. Despite her closeness to the rest of the senior staff, Winona felt a little strange being demonstrably affectionate in front of them, but a couple drinks in and she was sitting practically on Chris’s lap, telling stories from her time at the Academy.

For that matter, One was curled up with Cait, making Winona wonder what exactly was going on there, but there probably wasn’t enough alcohol in the room to get her drunk enough to ask that question.

The ship left on the third, the day before Kelvin Day, for which she was nominally thankful--the last place she wanted to be was Earth, although it might have been less miserable than usual with Chris around.

Their good-bye was as low-key as they could make it, at least in public. “See you in May,” she said.

“I’ll miss you,” he said.

“I’ll miss you too.”

The night before had been a little more heated, but that was irrelevant.

She spent Kelvin Day with Phil as per usual, but somehow it hurt a little less.

* * *

The _Yorktown_ was sent with a large portion of the rest of the fleet to the Laurentian system to respond to a distress call from the Klingons, of all people; unfortunately, as forty-seven warbirds had been destroyed by some sort of unknown vessel, it was primarily a cleanup mission. Winona and the rest of the crew were working twelve-hour shifts, and when the distress call came in from Vulcan, they largely ignored it.

Until One took her aside and told her that there were seven ships still on Earth that were sent out to respond to the distress call, including the basically-finished _Enterprise_ , all staffed primarily by cadets. And that nothing had been heard from them since.

“Oh, God,” Winona said, and burst into tears.

When she got control of herself again, she pulled out of Number One’s arms, noting that the captain also had tear-streaks on her face, and said, “The best thing for me is work.”

“I think that’s true for most of us,” One said, and wiped her face with the back of one hand.

It was five days before they heard any more news, and Winona had been working between eighteen and twenty-hour shifts, against the advice of Phil. “It’s either long shifts or I go nuts,” she told him. “No one knows where Jim is.” She was worried as hell about Chris, too, but her son was an entirely different, and primary, matter.

Phil sighed and sent her away without saying anything else.

Once they heard news, though, it didn’t really make it any better. Vulcan destroyed, the _Enterprise_ the only ship left, Captain Pike captured and tortured by the enemy--and the enemy was--oh _God_ , Winona couldn’t even _think_ about it. But at least Jimmy was _alive_ , and _fine_ , even if he’d had to take control of the ship, which--

No. She wasn’t going to think about it.

Mere hours after they’d gotten the news, though, One announced that the _Yorktown_ had been rerouted to Earth ASAP. Winona was under no illusions that it wasn’t at least somewhat for her benefit, but it was a four-day trip, and she kept working at her nearly-fevered pace the whole time. They would be there a day or so after the _Enterprise_ , but Winona couldn’t dwell on it.

* * *

When they finally got back to Earth, no one tried to cut in line ahead of Winona for the transporter down to the surface. She, Phil, One, and a couple of younger crew members who had siblings who were at the academy made up the first group, and wonder of all wonders, _Jim_ was there to meet her.

“Mom,” he said, and a moment later they were hugging, and she was never going to let him go again.

“Can you tell me what happened?” she asked sometime later.

“Yeah,” Jim said. “Yeah, I think so. Do you have time?”

“I do,” she said, and they went back to his quarters, kicked out Dr. McCoy (she liked the man well enough but he was superfluous here), and Jim started talking.

It took more than an hour to tell the whole story, and Winona suspected there was some he was leaving out anyway, especially about how he’d known about the Klingon transmission. (She’d asked him once about Dr. McCoy and he’d deflected her comment at first, and then said, _It’s not . . . a thing, really_ , by which she guessed it wasn’t exclusive or serious, but she was fairly certain that it could be if only one of them had the guts to say so.) Still, it couldn’t have been an easy story to tell, and it certainly wasn’t easy to hear.

Especially the parts about Chris.

“Wait, he had you space-jumping onto a drill?” she said.

Jim shrugged. “Well, that worked out fine, as I actually had a lot more space-jumping experience than anyone else on the ship, as far as I can tell.”

Briefly, she was furious; white-hot anger dancing under her skin. She couldn’t believe that Chris would send her _son_ , a _cadet_ , out on a _suicide mission_ \--

\--before going on one himself. The anger retreated, banked like coals inside her. “And then he--he did what Captain Robau did, and went over to--” She couldn’t even finish the sentence.

“I know,” he said, and leaned into her side.

“Oh, my God, you’re alive,” she said, and buried her face against his shoulder.

“And so is he,” he said.

She sat up and looked at him sharply. “You are my priority here,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “Believe me, it’s nice, but I’m fine, mostly.” He’d had some damage to his face, he’d told her, but he’d gotten most of it fixed already. “I need another week’s worth of sleep and then I will be fine. Captain Pike, on the other hand, is not fine, and I think you should go see him.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Winona said, and felt a fresh bout of tears surge up. “Oh, Jesus fuck, I hate this.”

“I know,” Jim said. “Once, you’d think, is enough. But it happened again, sort of, and Earth is safe, and even though a lot of people are gone--” He blinked and looked away for a moment. “There’s nothing we can do but rebuild.”

“When did you get so smart?” she asked, after a moment.

“I think Pike beat it into me,” he admitted, and she laughed, a watery chuckle. “So, I’ll walk you over to the hospital.”

She frowned at him. “Now?”

“No time like the present.”

“There are a lot of times like the present,” she said. “There’s ‘after I’ve had food and a nap,’ and there’s ‘after Phil gets time to ream him out,’ and there’s ‘when he’s ready for visitors,’ et cetera.”

Jim rolled his eyes. “I assume I’m supposed to feed you lunch now?”

“Is it lunch-time?”

He rolled his eyes again, but with a grin.

An hour later, Winona’d gotten a sandwich that she’d eaten at least half of, and she’d made use of the Academy gym showers and even found a clean uniform, before she ran out of excuses and let Jim escort her to Starfleet Medical.

He kissed her on the cheek and left her at the door, citing ‘other things’ he had to do, but Dr. McCoy met her just inside and walked her up to the intensive care unit. “Jim told you what happened?” he said.

“With the bug, yeah, and he said that--” Fuck, when had she turned into a watering-can?

“He was physically tortured before that, yes.” McCoy pulled a tissue out of a dispenser on the wall and handed it to her. “I can’t tell you more without his permission, but I can tell you that he’s had five surgeries so far and we’re cautiously optimistic.”

“About what?” Winona asked.

Dr. McCoy blinked. “That he’ll be able to walk again.”

“Oh.” Oh, _fuck_. “I don’t know . . .” She let the sentence trail off.

He nodded and herded her into a small waiting room. “Take all the time you need, ma’am.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t call me that; I feel old enough as it is.”

He laughed. “Be right back.” He ducked out, and returned a few minutes later with a very tall blonde woman. “Dr. Dehner, Winona Kirk.” He stepped out and the door closed behind him.

Dr. Dehner smelled like a psych, but Winona didn’t say anything except, “Hello,” before the other woman said, “Oh, my goodness, Winona _Kirk_?”

“Yes, _that_ Winona Kirk,” Winona said, pressing her lips together. She hated getting that, especially from women who could hardly be older than Jim.

“No, not that,” Dr. Dehner said, apparently reading her mind. “Captain Pike--Chris--asked for ‘Winona’ a few times while he was mostly out of it, but refused to identify you once he was cogent.”

“Oh,” Winona said. “Oh, fuck. Sorry.” The last was intended for her language, and Dr. Dehner just nodded. “I--this is--”

Dr. Dehner nodded again, and Winona had the strangest feeling that she did, actually, understand. Which was impossible, because she was, what, twenty-five? Thirty at the most. “You’re not listed on any of his paperwork,” she said. “Dr. McCoy told me he knew who you were but wouldn’t divulge any details. How long have you and Chris been involved?”

“Weeks,” Winona said. “Months, if we’re being generous. Since mid-December, I guess.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t think I’m the person you want.”

Dr. Dehner shrugged. “What do you think I’m looking for?”

“Someone who’s known him a long time.”

“I’ve got Dr. Boyce for that.”

“Yeah, but . . .” Winona sighed. “Fuck. I feel like a--like a really horrible person for saying this, but, I mean.” She bit her lip. “If you want someone who will be able to--to _rehab_ him, I still don’t know if I’m that person.”

“Oh, no--” Dr. Dehner said. “No, no. That’s way too much of a load to put on one person.” She patted Winona on the shoulder awkwardly. “I’m sorry if I implied that’s what we wanted. I just wanted to know what role you already play in his life.”

“I’m still chickening out about--about going to--to _see_ him.” Damnit, she was crying _again_. This had better stop, and soon.

“That’s understandable,” Dr. Dehner said.

“I--I keep having to remind myself that--that at least he-he’s not _dead_ , but Jesus _fuck_ , I don’t--why, twice?” She sank into one of the chairs and buried her face in her hands, shoulders shaking.

“I’m sorry,” she said, after what felt like twenty hours. “You’re not my counselor. I shouldn’t be dumping all this on you.”

“Right now, we’re all doing what we can,” Dr. Dehner said. “Don’t worry about it. If you can’t handle seeing him right now--and I’m not going to lie; he doesn’t look any better than you’d think--then can you at least write him a note?”

“Oh, Jesus, that would make me feel worse.” She didn’t think she’d taken the Lord’s name in vain so many times in years, and she could feel her mother-in-law disapproving all the way from Riverside, but she didn’t really care. “Give me a minute. I can do this.”

“Do you want me to go with you, or anyone else? I can call your son or Dr. McCoy or anyone else you’d like.”

“No,” Winona said. “No, I think there’s going to be a lot of crying and I’m pretty sick of crying in public at this point.” She gave a short laugh.

Dr. Dehner smiled. “Yeah, I’ve heard that a lot.” She shrugged. “Everyone’s still hurting, from the top on down.”

“Yeah.” She knew a couple of the admirals had children in the fleet, and that couldn’t have made their decisions any easier. “Okay, Winona. Time to put on your big-girl pants.” She took a deep breath, and said, “Let’s do this.”

Dr. Dehner paged ahead to warn Chris that he had a visitor, but Winona walked over to his room by herself, nerves steeled, lips pressed together, only acknowledging other people in the hallway with short nods if necessary.

She stood outside the door and waited for about five breaths, and then pushed forward close enough to get the door to open.

The first thing she noticed was that they’d shaved his head. It made him look--wrong. His face was also thinner than it had been, and the planes and angles looked harsher than before. But, oh, he was _alive_ , and it didn’t matter. “Chris,” she said, and he looked up, opening his eyes.

“Winona,” he said, and started blinking rapidly. “Oh, Winona, I’m so sorry.”

“No,” she said, and it came out kind of strangled. “No,” she said, trying again, and this time it was strong, authoritative. “Don’t _ever_ apologize to me for--for this. Any of it.”

He nodded. “Come here,” he said. “Please.”

She did, and stopped at the side of the bed. The need to touch him, to make sure that he was actually there, was almost overwhelming. It was--weird. She didn’t touch people. She just didn’t. But right now, she thought she might be in actual physical pain if she didn’t. “I want to touch you,” she said, “but I don’t know where I can.”

He smiled, at least partway. “Almost anywhere,” he said. “They’ve got me on the good stuff.” 

He held out a hand, and she put her hand in it, noting that his fingers trembled and he had no grip, but she let him pull her in close. Close enough to kiss, and she pressed her lips to his forehead. “Can I hold you?” he asked, barely audible. “I’d . . . really like that.” His voice cracked on the last word.

She nodded, not sure she could speak.

It took a moment to shift him over in the bed, since he had no strength and his legs didn’t work very well. Soon enough, though, they made a space in the bed for Winona, and she climbed up carefully and fitted herself against his shoulder. “Does anything hurt?”

“No,” Chris said, and she was fairly certain he was lying but figured it didn’t matter.

She relaxed, just a bit, still not willing to rest all of her weight on him, and took a breath. He didn’t smell exactly like she remembered, and the overwhelming scent of hospital interfered, but it was close enough. Eventually her body remembered the position, even if it wasn’t quite the same, and she sank a little against him.

“Winona,” he murmured against her hair, and she felt tears leaking down her face. She sniffed, and that was that. His chest started shaking and his arms wrapped around her; she clutched a fistful of his robe, and held on.

She didn’t know when they slid from grief to sleep, but at some point they did, because she woke up when the biobed made some sort of ridiculous noise above her head. Chris stiffened under her, and she sat up as quickly as possible, so she wasn’t pinning any part of him down.

“I’m all right,” he said, but his eyes were showing a bit too much white and his breath was coming a bit too fast.

Winona nodded and let him tangle his fingers in her own. She scrubbed at the side of her face, where she could feel the creases from sleep, and before she could muster up the desire to say anything, the door swished open, and Dr. Dehner entered.

“Chris,” she said. “Commander Kirk. You’re awake.”

Winona blushed, but held her gaze steady, and Chris just chuckled. “Liz,” he said. “I assume you kept the harpies away?”

“I _am_ one of the harpies,” Dr. Dehner said, returning the chuckle. “You slept for a couple hours. I did run interference; a couple of nurses wanted to burst in, considering that the presence of Commander Kirk messed up some of the readings on the biobed, but I pulled rank and refused.”

“Pulled rank?” Chris raised an eyebrow.

“Called in Dr. Boyce,” she said breezily, and sat down in the chair. “So let’s talk about this.”

“No,” he said. “My personal life is none of your business.”

“It is when it gives you the first natural sleep you’ve gotten in the last week,” Dr. Dehner said, and there was a core of steel in the statement that gave Winona a hint as to why this young woman was handed what had to be a very difficult case for the ‘fleet.

“No,” he said again. “It’s not--” He stopped, and shook his head.

Winona suddenly knew what the problem was--and she also knew she’d made her decision, sometime in the last three or so hours. _Blast._ She hated it when her heart made decisions without telling her. “Look, I’ll step out for a moment,” she said, and hustled out of the room before either could protest.

Leaning against the wall outside the door, she buried her face in her hands and tried to slow her pulse down.

“Something wrong?” she heard a couple moments later, and looked up to see Dr. McCoy standing in the hallway, a few feet from her.

“Ah,” she said, not sure if she wanted to discuss it with McCoy, of all people. “Not really, no.”

“Have a nice nap?”

She gave him a look, and he laughed. “Jim tries that look on me occasionally. It doesn’t work when he does it, and frankly, ma’am, you’re about half as scary as my grandma.”

Winona sighed. “Yes, I had a nice nap.”

“Looked pretty cozy to me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Stop acting like you didn’t know weeks ago, or I’ll start interrogating you on your intentions toward my son.”

Dr. McCoy gave a thin half-smile. “That, ma’am, is entirely up to him.”

Winona sighed, and slid down the wall to sit. “I knew it. Seems commitment-phobia runs in the family.”

He chuckled, and then sobered. “To be fair, this is a hell of a moment to have to make that sort of decision.”

“Yeah. It’s basically taking all I have not to run away to Risa or something.” She looked back up at him again, and said, “You’re secretly a psych, aren’t you.”

“It’s not much of a secret,” he said, shrugging and sitting down next to her. “He’s going to have a lot of work to do in the next few months and years.”

“I know,” she said, and furrowed her brow as she turned to him. “That’s not it.”

“You mean--”

“I mean I don’t care if he ever walks again,” she said, and the strangest part was that she had no idea that it was true until she said it. “I don’t care about the PTSD either.” She gave a harsh laugh. “Please. I really don’t. I just . . .”

“Am afraid of being vulnerable?” he said.

“Stop it,” Winona said.

McCoy inexplicably started laughing, full, deep belly-laughs. She stared at him a moment until he explained. “Jim stole that from you lock, stock, and barrel.”

“Considering it was about half of what he heard for his entire childhood, I’m not surprised,” she said. “Yeah, I don’t--for fuck’s sake, you’d think I’d have gotten this shit all figured out,” she said. “I’m probably giving you a bad idea of what Jim will be like in thirty-odd years.”

“He’s got his own set of issues,” he said, and shook his head. “I’ll wait.”

“He would be a blazing fool to lose you,” she said, and patted him on the shoulder.

“Thanks,” he said, and she distinctly heard a note of irony in there. “I’m not going to tell you that you would be a fool to give up Captain Pike, because my mama raised me better than that. And I’m not talking to you as part of the psych department, but as your son’s best friend and whatnot--”

“My future son-in-law,” Winona said. “Let’s call it what it is.”

“As family, then,” McCoy said. “It might be a lot harder to walk back in that room than to leave, at least in the short term, and I’m not going to tell you you have to ignore what you need, but honestly, ma’am--”

“Winona,” she said. “Stop calling me ma’am. Didn’t I tell you that earlier?”

“You did.”

She sighed. “You’re not going to listen to me, are you.”

“Force of habit,” he said, and she still heard the ‘ma’am’ even if he didn’t say it.

“Sorry I interrupted,” she said. “You were saying? Although I can guess what the end result is: you think I’ll be much happier in the long run if I go back in there and stop being a chickenshit.”

“Something like that.”

She sighed. “You’re right. I know you’re right. Why is it so hard? And why am I asking you?”

“It’s always hard, and I couldn’t tell you, ma--Winona.”

She smiled. “It wasn’t difficult with George,” she said. “We were young, and invincible, and not terribly self-aware.”

“Yeah, well,” McCoy said, and his tone went dark. “Second time around, you know all the things that could go wrong.”

She laughed. “Practically everything that could go wrong already did,” she said. “It should be easy from here on out.”

“Well, then,” he said, and stood, an easy motion. Winona envied him his youth for a moment, and rolled her eyes at herself mentally. He turned, and held out a hand to her. “Time for your triumphant return, I think.”

“Yeah,” she said, taking his hand and using it to pull herself up. “Thanks, Dr. McCoy. Er. Leonard? That’s your first name, right? Jim always calls you ‘Bones.’”

“You can call me Bones, too, if you like,” he said, with a shrug. “Or Leonard, or McCoy. Doesn’t matter; I’ll answer to any of ‘em.”

“Leonard,” she said, and stood on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “Maybe I’ll call you Bones when Jim calls to tell me that we’re officially welcoming you to the family.”

He smiled, and gestured to the door.

She touched her fingers to the annunciator, and the door opened automatically. “Do you need more time?” she asked.

Chris shook his head, and Dr. Dehner said, “No, I think we’ve come to an understanding.”

“Good,” Winona said. “What do you need from me?”

His face went blank; Dr. Dehner’s didn’t change from her normal expression. “I’m not sure what you mean,” he said carefully.

Winona’s heart ached at his words, and she said, “Dr. Dehner, I think it’s your turn to step out for a moment.”

Dr. Dehner disappeared without a word, and Winona said, “It’s time.”

“What’s time?” he asked, voice still carefully neutral.

Winona took a deep breath. “It’s time I stopped running; time I stopped lying to myself. I’ll stay, with you, if that’s what you want.”

“Are you sure?” he said, voice barely audible.

“Of course I’m sure,” she said, maybe a little too sharply. “Again--if that’s what you want.”

“It is,” he said, “most _emphatically_ what I want.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said, but she was smiling and climbing back onto the bed to kiss him.

“How are we going to do this?” he asked, some time later; his arms were still around her even though he barely had enough strength to hold on.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Number One will let me transfer to Earth; that shouldn’t be a problem. There’s no way Command will deny me that, and if they do, I’ll apply for compassionate leave until Jim takes off again, to start. Do we need to sign papers?”

“Liz, I think, has a list of our options prepared,” he said, and sighed. “Should probably let her back in, anyway.”

“And right when I was starting to get comfortable,” she said. With one last kiss, she pushed herself off the bed and went to stick her head out the door.

Dr. Dehner was sitting on the floor where Winona had been, using a stylus on the screen of a padd. “Everything worked out?” she asked. The smile on her face made Winona think she already knew.

“Yes,” Winona said anyway. “Come back in?”

Dr. Dehner entered the room, and said, “I’ll support compassionate leave, even though you’ll be filing paperwork after the fact.”

“What would we need to sign?” Winona asked.

Dr. Dehner shrugged. “Anything more binding than a medical visitation agreement, I think, would work, but you have options.”

Winona nodded. There were five levels of registered relationships in Starfleet, from the simple declaration form that conveyed nearly no rights, all the way through marriage. “So a 105 would work?” she said, attempting to keep her tone light.

Chris sucked in a breath, but didn’t say anything. Dr. Dehner nodded, and said, “Yeah, that would be about perfect,” her tone matching Winona’s carefully.

“And then what?” Winona asked.

“You apply for leave; it gets approved. You do what you can.” Dr. Dehner shrugged. “Soon, we’re going to have to lower the levels of drugs we’ve got him on. That’s when the difficult stuff starts.”

Winona nodded. “Okay.”

“Well!” Dr. Dehner said, and stood. She found another padd in her pocket, flipped through a few screens, and said, “Here’s the 105 form. I’ll just leave the two of you to that, although a nurse will probably want to come in shortly to make sure everything is all right.”

“Is Chapel on shift?” Chris asked, as Winona took the padd.

“I think so,” Dr. Dehner said.

“See if she can do the check,” Chris said, and he had a strange grin on his face that Winona considered for a moment and then ignored.

“All right,” Dr. Dehner said, and left.

Chris turned to Winona with both eyebrows raised and said, “Were you going to get down on one knee at some point?”

“What, do you want me to?” she asked. “It’s a one-year domestic partnership contract. It gives us everything we want and allows either renewal or automatic termination.”

And, out of the roughly five hundred issued by the ‘fleet every year, about ninety-five percent turned into permanent partnership or marriage. There was a reason its nickname was ‘the engagement form.’ She was well aware of that, but she--well, she needed something more permanent than a simple declaration and less permanent than marriage.

“For the record,” he said, “I would have been satisfied with a 402.” He meant the declaration of kinship form.

“Then we’ll do a 402,” she said.

“Oh, no,” he said. “You offered a 105.” Now he was smiling. “And I expect you on one knee.”

“If I get on one knee, you won’t be able to see my head over the side of the bed,” she said.

He responded by reaching over to the bed’s controls and lowering it until it was about a foot and a half above the ground.

Winona let out an exaggerated sigh, and sank down to one knee, holding out the padd. “Chris Pike, will you do me the honor of signing the 105 form with me?”

And suddenly all the teasing, all the sarcasm was gone, along with what felt like half the oxygen in the room. She was a woman, half-kneeling on the floor, vulnerable in a way she’d never been before, even if the conclusion was foregone, and before she could get too light-headed he’d leaned over and held out a hand. “Yes,” he breathed. “Yes, of course, Winona, always.”

Which wasn’t quite the answer to the question she’d actually asked, but maybe it was the answer to the question she meant to ask. Or should have asked. She took his hand, climbed back into the bed, and settled against his side. It was very convenient that she was right-handed and he was left-handed, because they could fill out the form without having to move or jostle each other, and if his handwriting was nearly illegible, she didn’t say anything.

She hit the submit button with the tip of the stylus, and leaned her head against his shoulder. He took the padd and the stylus from her and set them on the table. Pressing his lips to her temple, he kissed her for a moment before saying, “You heard Liz. This isn’t--going to be easy.”

“If all you wanted was unconditional support and warm fuzzies,” Winona said, “I’m a terrible choice. It normally takes large quantities of alcohol to get me to talk about anything important, and one of my old engineering departments didn’t call me the Hitchcock Blonde because I resemble Grace Kelly in any way. But I promise I’ll be here.”

“Is it because you stab people in the shower?” he asked, and she smiled. “No,” he said, “I know what I’m getting into. But I’m not sure you do.”

“I can piece it together,” she said. “Let me guess--you get frustrated when things don’t come to you easily because you’ve always been brilliant and effortlessly athletic, even though you’ve always worked hard at both; when you’re mad, you take it out on everyone with sarcasm, and end up saying a lot of things you don’t mean but that, nonetheless, are true.”

“Am I so obvious?”

“Do you think you’re the only one who learned anything during the interview?” she asked.

“Apparently not,” he said. “It’s not just that, though. The prognosis--they’re not entirely sure what will or will not happen, but once the swelling goes down, they’ll be able to tell whether I’ll be able to walk again or not. I’ll probably never dance again, but considering that I didn’t dance in the first place--” He huffed out a quiet laugh. “I won’t be much use in the bedroom for a while, between the paralysis and the likely psychological effects.”

“I know,” she said. “That wasn’t--I never hesitated because of potential disability--”

“I didn’t think you had,” he said. “I figured it was more basic than that.”

“Yeah,” she said. “And you--I don’t know if you’ve forgotten but it’s not as if I didn’t have any experience with this sort of thing. With PTSD. I mean--what did you think I was going through when you interviewed me?” She didn’t like to call it that. She didn’t like to call it anything at all except maybe ‘going through a bad time,’ but post-traumatic stress and post-partum depression and the plain old grief from losing a spouse were an awful combination.

“A lot,” he said, and gave her a half-smile. “I didn’t forget. You came through it so well that I can only hope to be half as graceful.”

“I didn’t really,” she said, but before she could say any more, the room noise chimed. They both jumped a bit, and Chris said, “Yes, come in,” as Winona shifted off the bed and into the chair.

A blonde woman with her hair tied into a bun, tall and blue-eyed and human, walked in, and Winona did a double-take before asking, “Are you Ilyrian?” Because, other than the hair and about fifteen years of age, she was a dead ringer for Number One.

“No, sir,” she said, with a good-natured smile. “Christine Chapel--born and raised in New Orleans from about eight generations of good New Orleans stock. I apparently just look like Captain One through some weird quirk of genetics.”

“That’s . . . really strange.” Now that she took the time to look, she could see tiny differences, and hear them--Chapel had a faint accent that came out when she talked about her hometown, and Number One had no accent at all--but it was still uncanny.

“I’ve heard that before, sir,” Chapel said, “but I’ve yet to meet her.”

She checked the biobed, adjusted a few settings, made some notes on her padd, and headed to the door before she said, “And congratulations, sir. Sirs.”

“Thanks,” Chris said. Winona smiled.

“I’m afraid of what might happen if we got the two of them in the same room,” he said after the door shut behind her.

“Oh, dear.”

“I’m pretty sure if they joined forces, they’d probably be running the entire Federation in about six months.”

Winona laughed.

He put the bed back at standard height, and patted the space next to him; she climbed back in, and said, “I can’t stay here all the time. I need to shower occasionally, and that means I need to get someone to assign me temporary quarters.”

He laughed. “Don’t bother. Stay at my place. I never got rid of your access, so you can still just walk in.”

“Okay,” she said. “Aren’t you afraid of me redecorating?”

Chris laughed again. “I haven’t even managed to repaint the walls since there was a mixup with my original request. You can’t do anything to make the place worse.”

“Ah, so that explains it.”

He yawned and nodded, and she squeezed his hand.

* * *

Later, after he’d fallen asleep again, Winona left Starfleet Medical and headed over to Glenn Hall. His apartment was roughly the same as she remembered it; there were clean dishes sitting next to the sink, so she replaced them in the cabinets. He’d left his toothbrush sitting on the side of the sink instead of in the holder, so she put that back, too. The bed had hospital-sharp corners, but the sheets weren’t brand new; she sat in the middle of the bed after turning the sheets down and inhaled.

There it was: the smell she’d missed for the last six weeks. And, of course, there were the tears. She sniffled into his pillow for a few minutes before getting herself a tissue and then going to the living room, to sit on the couch and not be maudlin for a few minutes.

Her padd was blinking, so she checked it and found about ten messages, mostly short textcomms saying some variation on ‘congratulations!’ The message from Sam was a little more involved, as she’d somehow managed to avoid telling him about anything about Chris in the first place, but apparently Jim had filled him in.

Speaking of Jim, he’d left her a textcomm insisting that she call at once; it was only around dinnertime, so she sent him a quick note that she was available and could take his call any time he wanted. He binged her comm line less than a minute later, and she routed it through Chris’s large monitor.

“Mom,” he said. “Am I supposed to call him Step-Dad now?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “No, you’re supposed to call him ‘Captain Pike, sir,’ unless he tells you otherwise.”

Jim laughed. “Congrats, though. You might want to call Sam; he called me this afternoon and wasn’t too happy that he had no notice.”

“Yeah, I got his thinly-veiled nasty-gram,” Winona said. “Apparently I raised a pair of heathens. Don’t either of you respect your mother?”

“Hey!” he said. “I respect you a lot. I could have asked, ‘Hey, do they let you form contracts when you’re on more than four kinds of drugs?’”

She rolled her eyes. If he’d been on drugs that affected his ability to consent or form contracts, Liz wouldn’t have suggested it.

“Except I already know the answer to that one: yes, but either of you might be able to challenge it later. Somehow I don’t think you’re going to, though.”

“Probably not,” she agreed.

“He’s not--not going to be captaining a ship again, is he.”

The sudden shift in tone threw her for a moment, but there really wasn’t much doubt as to what Jim meant. “Not in the near future, no.”

He nodded, and let out a long breath. “I wanted to be his XO.”

“I’m pretty sure that gig was going to Spock, Jim,” she said.

“Oh, I know it was supposed to, but I figured if I was just that amazing, and since I was command track, not sciences, then maybe he’d change his mind. I don’t know.” Jim looked above the camera for a moment. “I don’t even know if Spock actually wants to be a captain, at least of a regular ship. I mean, or if he did. It’s all different now, probably moot. He and I ended up working pretty well together, so if he stays with Starfleet and we end up on the same ship, probably tactics and science officer, respectively, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. But, I mean, as much trouble as I gave Captain Pike, I’m not stupid enough to think there isn’t a ton that I could have learned from him.”

“He’s not dead,” she said, maybe a little sharper than she should have. “He may be grounded for a while, or even permanently, but you certainly can still learn from him.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jim said, “but probably not as his first officer. I suppose that fixes the problem of being first officer with my mother as chief engineer, though.”

Winona sighed. “That would have been interesting.”

“Are you grounded?”

“I’ll probably take a year on Earth,” she said, “yes. I can take leave, or, well, I’ve got almost forty years in; I might take the damn promotion they’ve been trying to shove on me for years.” She sighed again. “I don’t know what’s going to happen after that and I’ve been doing a very good job of not thinking about it.”

“Why? Afraid?”

He sounded curious instead of sarcastic or challenging, so she gave him half an answer. “When, to date, you can’t forget what happened the last time you felt like this because your job keeps shoving it in your face, it’s a little difficult not to be afraid. And no, I’m not going to discuss this anymore with you.”

Jim held his hands up. “I really don’t want to hear anymore, I promise. I just . . . I know we haven’t had the smoothest relationship, but I do want you to be happy.”

“I know,” she said. “I want you to be happy, too. Speaking of, that doctor of yours . . .”

“Oh, my God, Mom, _no_.”

She called Sam next, and spent a few minutes groveling and promising to bring Chris to Christmas this year, however damn many months it was away, and making faces at her year-and-a-half-old grandson, who gave a big smile and patted the screen.

The next morning, she showed up to the hospital, and the door to Chris’s room wouldn’t open. She touched her fingers to the annunciator, and got nothing. She tried again, and same result. Odd. She went to the nurse’s station and asked, and was told she should talk to Dr. Dehner.

“Ah,” Dr. Dehner said a few minutes later, in her office. “He insisted that we start taking him off some of the short-term drugs that were keeping some of the effects at bay, late last night, and since there was no medical reason not to do so, we did. Unfortunately, things have been kind of rough for him, and when he said no visitors, he told us he meant that literally.” She spread her hands. “I don’t know what to tell you. I told him you would still want to see him.”

“Oh,” Winona said. She was a little disappointed but not particularly insulted. “Well, um, tomorrow?”

“I hope so,” Dr. Dehner said. “If nothing else, I’ve heard that the admiral and the professor will be back on Earth in the next day or so.”

“The who?”

Dr. Dehner smiled. “Chris’s parents.”

“Oh.” Winona winced. She really was too old for this shit. “Well. I’ll try back tomorrow. Maybe I’ll send him a textcomm or something.”

She did, but got an auto-response: _Capt. C. Pike is not available at the present time._ That stung a little, but she buried it quickly and commed One to invite her to lunch or dinner or something.

_There’s a nice Andorian-fusion café that’s very close to the Grand Ole Creamery._

_\--Hey. I’m not asking you to lunch for any sort of reason other than food and a relatively-clear schedule._

_That doesn’t mean we don’t need ice cream._

_\--Fair enough._

One waited until the food came out before saying, “So, a 105?”

Winona shrugged. “Served all necessary purposes.”

“Oh?”

Winona sighed. “You know,” she said, “I’m rather sick of my personal life being treated as public property by Starfleet.”

One’s face flooded with sympathy. “I can understand that. Obviously I’m not asking as your captain--or, I suppose, your former captain--but as a friend, but I expect you’re sick of any inquiry.”

“That’s about it,” Winona said, and felt a pang of remorse for her sharp response. “I don’t mean to--”

“I know,” One said. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’ve seen him nearly as happy as he has been the last few weeks. Provided you’re happy, I don’t need to know any more.”

Winona almost burst into tears of relief, but just said, “Thank you.”

“I expect to be invited to the formal ceremony, though.”

“Ugh, there isn’t going to be one, if I have my way,” she said. “I did that once; that’s enough. Although I suppose _he’s_ never. Damn. Speaking of, what do I need to know about his parents?”

One sighed. “He and his dad don’t get along all that well, but they did come to a détente some five or seven years ago, when his dad retired from active duty. His mother is a tad eccentric but she’s really very nice and, I would guess, since you’re Terran human, you won’t be up for as many questions as I was.”

Winona smiled. “What does she study?”

“You know, I’ve never been exactly sure, but somewhere in the xeno-anthropology field.”

“Ah. And because you’re Ilyrian--”

“I’m not, really,” One said, unexpectedly. “By heritage, certainly, but I got out of there as soon as I could. I don’t do a very good job of adhering to Ilyrian principles of behavior, and I don’t want to. I think at this point I’m just a generic Federation citizen.”

“Oh.” Winona wasn’t sure to say to that, so she offered a smile. “We’re glad to have you?”

“Thanks,” One said.

* * *

The next morning was the same story; Winona didn’t know if she should have expected it or not, but it was now annoying. On the way out, she passed by a tall man with a shock of white hair and piercing blue eyes, and a tiny woman, also white-haired, with gray eyes and--Chris’s face, she realized abruptly. “Admiral Pike? Dr. Pike?” she said. Oh, God, was she doing this? She could have just walked out.

They stopped and turned around. “Yes?” Dr. Pike said. “Oh, you’re Winona Kirk. We were hoping we’d get to meet you. Have you seen Chris today?”

“Ah, no, actually,” she said. “Nor yesterday. He’s not taking visitors at the moment, which includes me.”

“That won’t include us,” Admiral Pike said.

Dr. Pike poked him in the shoulder. “If it includes his _wife_ , it’ll include us.”

“I’m not his wife,” Winona said quickly, with a horrible sinking feeling in her stomach.

“Wife, fiancée, whatever,” Dr. Pike said, with a gesture.

Winona swallowed. _Not fiancée, either_ was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t say it.

“Have you eaten breakfast?” Dr. Pike asked.

“I could use more coffee,” she said. She’d had a bagel earlier.

“Well, then,” Dr. Pike said, and led Winona and her husband off to the commissary.

Even though Dr. Pike told her to call them Mina and Josh, Winona couldn’t help but think of Chris’s parents by their titles. Watching the admiral scarf down an omelet didn’t change that. Dr. Pike was warm and personable and clearly wanted to ask Winona all about herself, but Admiral Pike had obviously pulled her service jacket and seemed to know everything about her life, inside of Starfleet and out. “You were married to George Kirk,” the admiral said.

Winona nodded. Most of Starfleet knew that much.

“And you’ve got a couple of adult children.”

“Sam is twenty-nine; he’s married to Aurelan and they have a son, Peter, with another kid on the way.”

“Yes,” he said. “Dr. Kirk and Dr. Jira both contract with Starfleet from time to time.”

Ah. That explained why Chris and Phil had met him. “Jim is--well, I’m sure you know all about Jim.” Again, common knowledge.

Admiral Pike rolled his eyes. “Troublemaker.”

It was undeniable, but Winona couldn’t let this man--an outsider--say it. Not with that tone. “He’s been very successful so far,” she said.

“You’re going to defend his cheating?” he said.

“I don’t know anything about that,” she said, and her heart sank.

“Josh,” Dr. Pike said, and by his reaction, kicked him under the table. “Let’s go back to the more important part. You obviously did see Chris at some point, right?”

Winona nodded. “He, ah--they shaved his head. I guess he had several surgeries, but they got the bug out and they’re waiting for the swelling to go down before they make any permanent assessments. He’d been on high doses of painkillers and they just started bringing him down off of those a couple days ago.” She didn’t mention any of the psychological effects; besides, any more than what she said was his information to give, not hers.

“You and Chris have known each other a long time, haven’t you?” Admiral Pike said.

The question took her by surprise, and she said, “Ah, I guess? Technically.”

“He was on the _Kelvin_ with you briefly while he was still at the Academy.”

“Yes,” Winona said. “I don’t particularly remember it. I was pregnant with Sam at the time and spent most of my free time hiding in quarters, trying not to be too nauseated.”

Dr. Pike smiled at her. “No wonder you don’t remember him. Those aren’t fun days.”

“No, ma’am, they’re not.”

“So, when exactly did you decide to make this official?”

Winona blushed. “I’m sorry if he never mentioned anything to you--”

“Oh, he never does,” Dr. Pike said, with a glare at her husband. “I don’t think we’ve ever found out about a partner of his until he changes his next-of-kin notification form, and even then, sometimes he turns the notifications off.”

Winona smiled.

“Although,” Dr. Pike said, “that could be because after he broke it off with Janeese, he changed his next-of-kin to Dr. Boyce and _some_ of us got the wrong idea.”

Admiral Pike chuckled. “That was a bit--premature, let’s say.”

It was the first display of warmth from him, and Winona had been waiting for it--waiting for an explanation as to how he and Dr. Pike had remained married for what was probably closing in on half a century. It helped, the chuckle, but he was still damn intimidating.

“Anyway,” Dr. Pike said, patting Winona’s hand. “We’re in town indefinitely; I hope you’ll feel free to come by and visit, especially when Chris feels like having visitors again.”

Winona nodded.

* * *

After she went home--back to Chris’s--she remembered what the admiral had said about Jim cheating; how could she forget? Normally she’d go to Chris for more information, but that wasn’t an option right now. Barnett was head of the Starfleet Academy Board, but she’d never been in much contact with him. Finally, she sent a quick textcomm to Dr. Boyce. _Can I meet with you briefly?_

 _Sure,_ he replied almost immediately. _Is this about Chris?_

_\--No; Jim._

_Ahhh, you heard about the hearing, did you?_

_\--No, and that’s the problem. I’d like a rundown of the facts before I yell at Jim about it._

_I would contact Number One--I think she actually knows more about it than I do._

_\--All right._ She was not pleased that everyone in Starfleet appeared to know about Jim _cheating_ except her, but she checked One’s public schedule--nothing that afternoon--and went to pick up a couple of pints of ice cream from Crema Café. _Kid’s going to reimburse me for all this bribery I’m doing on his behalf,_ she thought, and shoved two spoons in her pocket. 

When she got back to Chris’s place, she sent One a textcomm saying, _I have Crema Café ice cream I’m willing to trade for information._

 _Hopefully I have information you want,_ One replied.

A couple hours later Winona said, “Maybe I should go running with Jim tomorrow, with the amount of ice cream I’ve been eating.”

One laughed. “What is it you wanted to ask?”

“Jim,” she said. “Admiral Pike said something about Jim cheating on something?”

“Oh,” One said. “From what I’ve heard, Jim installed a subroutine that changed the parameters of the Kobayashi Maru test in the middle, allowing him to win it. He’d already successfully taken the test twice before that. There was a hearing on the matter, but before it finished, the distress call had already come in and they sent everyone off on ships.”

Winona closed her eyes. Fuck. This really was the last straw. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said. “I have no idea why _no one thought to tell me that_ and why Jim even decided that was a good idea, but you know what? I just don’t have room for any more bullshit on my plate.” She put the lid back on her pint, set it down on One’s end table, and stalked out. She heard One calling after her, but didn’t stop.

She didn’t get all that far, though; before she hit the end of the hall, she heard another voice calling her name--Phil’s--and half-turned out of instinct. He was standing with his head and shoulders poking out of a door, not five feet away, and said, “Fuck,” when she met his eyes. “Come here.”

Winona shook her head--if she said a word she’d start crying--but he ignored that and walked over. Putting his arm around her shoulders, he guided her into his quarters, giving her ample time to complain if she was going to. Once inside--once the door had shut--he pulled her into his arms and said, “You’re right, this is bullshit, from beginning to end, but the point of having friends is that you don’t have to handle it all alone. Not again.”

“Damn you,” she said weakly, and fell apart.

She dimly felt him lead her to the couch, and she knew a couple other people were present, but she didn’t _care_ ; it was still too much.

She cried until she felt all cried out, and then cried some more; cried for herself, and for Jim, and for Chris, and for the Vulcans, even though she’d only met a handful of them in her entire life; for all the cadets lost; and finally, for George, even though she’d stopped crying about him twenty years ago or more.

When she surfaced, she realized her face was buried in Phil’s shoulder, and she’d soaked a large portion of his shirt. Someone was stroking her hair, and it couldn’t be Phil as she had both of his hands clutched in hers. She shifted just enough to figure out that the warm body behind her--attached to the person stroking her hair--was Number One, and the head resting on her knee belonged to Cait. “Oh, great,” she said, throat scratchy, and coughed. “Now you’ve got me in the middle of your happy little threesome.”

Phil laughed, rumbling under her cheek. Cait smacked her knee hard enough to make a sound, but not to hurt, and One sighed.

“Thanks,” Winona said. “Really.”

“Any time,” Phil said. “With or without alcohol.”

“Seriously,” Cait said. “Even if you insist on keeping me out of Engineering,” she added under her breath.

“Winona,” One said, and Winona looked over her shoulder. “You never needed to bring me ice cream.”

Winona smiled. “I’m sure that doesn’t mean I should stop, though.”

One shrugged. “Well, I mean, I won’t say _no_.”

“I have to go,” Winona said. “I’ve got a son to go corral, and make him give me some answers.”

“Try to stay calm,” Cait said.

“We’ll be on stand-by with alcohol,” Phil said.

“It’s early afternoon,” Winona said.

“Does that really matter?”

“Guess not,” she said. “Thanks, all of you. I don’t--I’m glad I’ve got you as friends.”

“And we’re glad to have you.” Phil kissed her on the forehead; One squeezed her shoulder, and Cait patted her knee.

* * *

_\--Are you available?_

_Yeah, Mom. What’s up?_

_\--No, I meant in-person._

_I can do that. Want me to come over?_

_\--No; how about we meet over by Jemison Quad?_

_Okay. See you in ten._

* * *

“Hi, Mom.”

Winona started, and turned. “Oh, there you are,” she said. “How are you?”

He shrugged. “Oh, you know, the usual.”

She nodded. “Yeah, same here.” A pause, and then: “Why did you join Starfleet?”

Jim heaved a sigh, shoved his hands in his pockets, and said, “It was time. I don’t know. It was just the right thing to do at the right time, bar fights aside.” He shrugged. “I didn’t go in so I could change the world or anything. I just--figured it was a better use of my time, and I’d spent too many years pretending it wasn’t what I wanted to do. What I was supposed to do.”

“Supposed to do?” she echoed. “What, because you were born in space? Because both of your parents were in the ‘fleet?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “Not really for either of those reasons, though; more because I’m not like Sam--I can’t make it about equations and abstractions. It’s about people, and this is how I do it.” He chuckled. “Also, _space_.”

Winona smiled. “Yeah,” she said. “So tell me about the third time you took the Kobayashi Maru.”

He started, and looked at her. “Who told you?” he asked.

“Admiral Joshua Pike tipped me off, which, by the way, was a fun conversation to have with him.”

“Your father-in-law?”

“Not my father-in-law,” she snapped. “This conversation is about you, not about me. Tell me what happened.”

“I thought,” he said, “that I could prove a point, that no situation is actually a no-win situation, and that if you change the way you think, any situation is winnable. But the admiralty didn’t agree, especially since Spock pushed the issue--”

“Wait, _Spock_ Spock?” she said. “The one you’re now friends with?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jim said. “He almost choked me to death and now we’re friends.”

She rolled her eyes. “Do you have to be such a stereotype?”

“Anyway,” he said, pointedly ignoring her comment, “I was on academic suspension for a while but they’ve dropped all that because of meritorious conduct, or whatever they’re calling it.”

“You know what,” she said, after she’d closed her eyes for a moment, “I probably should yell at you for cheating but I really don’t have anything left at this point. Is there anything else I need to know about that you left out so I can not look like a fool again?”

Jim shrugged. “Well, the academic suspension meant that Bones had to get me on the ship by getting me sick and then curing me right away.”

Winona groaned. “So you got him involved, too.”

“Yeah, but after saving Captain Pike’s life, he could pretty much run around Starfleet HQ stark naked and no one would care.”

She sighed. “You know, at this point, the least you could do is put the man out of his misery.”

“Mom. We’re not talking about it.”

“Okay.” She raised an eyebrow. “Anything else?”

“Nothing you should need to know, no.”

“Okay,” she said. “If it turns out otherwise, I’m taking it out of your hide.”

He laughed. “Love you too, Mom.”

* * *

Later that evening, Winona was idly flipping through different holo programs when there was a chime at the door, and she stood up to answer it.

Of all people, Lieutenant Zel stood there, holding a fairly large bag. “Winona,” she said. “May I come in?”

“Of course.” Winona stepped back and let her in; the door shut behind her. “What brings you here?”

“Among Andorians--that is, my keth--there are ceremonies, I guess you’d call them, for grief and loss and life and love. We usually find them helpful.” She shrugged, the Terran gesture looking oddly normal on her. “I asked Cait Barry what would be appropriate in your case, for a Terran human, and she recommended this.” Zel pulled a data solid out of her bag. “I have here ten of the stupidest comedy movies I could find, and--” She pulled out two large bottles.

“Homebrew?” Winona asked hopefully.

“Of course,” Zel said. “And popcorn.”

Winona grinned. “Yes,” she said. “That’s absolutely perfect for this week.” She leaned in, and stopped. “It’s been a long time--I don’t remember what Andorians do when Terrans would hug.”

“You could just hug me,” Zel said.

Winona smiled, and did.

* * *

The next day--Day 3--the door still didn’t open, so she sighed--and then thought, _No. I’m not taking this bullshit anymore._ “This is the third day of this ridiculousness,” she said to Dr. Dehner. “What do I have to do to get him to stop--” _Doubting me_ , she realized abruptly.

Dr. Dehner shrugged. “I can’t countermand his request, but I can deliver a message.”

“Tell him--” She stopped, and Dr. Dehner held out a padd.

Short and to the point, she reminded herself, and scribbled down a few lines, deleting half of them twice before coming up with, _When I said I’d be there, I didn’t just mean when everything was going well. I love you. Let me in._

She stared at it for a while before blanking the screen and handing it over to Dr. Dehner. After the other woman left the room, she nearly ran after her to get the padd back, but didn’t, by the skin of her teeth. Instead, she waited.

She didn’t have to wait too long; her pocket beeped, and she pulled out her padd to find it blinking green. New message. With her luck, it would be a routine textcomm from Command. She thumbed the padd on, took another deep breath, and looked.

It wasn’t from Command. It was from Chris: _Those had better be the first three words out of your mouth when you get in this room or I’ll kick you back out again._

Winona felt the smile spread across her face and shoved the padd back quickly into her pocket before walking quickly-- _not_ running, although if it had been anywhere but a hospital, she probably would have been sprinting--to Chris’s room. Dr. Dehner’s office was two floors up and on the opposite end of the building, but she managed to cross the distance in mere minutes.

She took the last few feet at a run; the door opened for her obediently, and she skidded to a stop just inside and said, “I love you.”

Fortunately he was alone, and the door managed to close behind her before her not-so-impromptu declaration. “I love you too,” he said, and his smile matched her own. “Come over here.”

Chris looked worse, actually, despite the smile; his hair was starting to grow back and somehow that was more pathetic than the shaved head. The lines in his face were deeper, and he was holding himself a little strangely. “How are you?” she asked, as she sat in the chair beside the bed.

He shrugged. “Not great,” he said. “No more opiates, so I’m in a lot more pain. Can’t sleep most of the time.”

“What’s actually wrong?” she asked. “I was going to ask, but I figured, not at first, and then--Well, anyway.”

He winced. “Two things,” he said. “First, the bug burrowed through my body until it reached my brain stem, and latched on there, secreting some stuff that has truth-serum properties. Most of that was fixed either with surgery--removing the bug and repairing damage--or with, well, basically dialysis: filtering my blood. The bigger problem is that the secretions have demyelinizing properties as well and wrecked my nervous system.”

“And in Standard?”

“Basically, it’s giving me MS. Multiple sclerosis. Also Guillain-Barré Syndrome.”

“Oh,” she said. She’d never actually heard of either disease, which meant they were particularly rare, or that the Federation had long since cured them. “So you’re in pain? Anything else?”

“Tingling, loss of sensation, partial paralysis. They stopped it before it hit my diaphragm, but still. I’ve also--my vision’s blurred, has been since yesterday,” he said. “I can’t read at the moment, and you’re a pinkish, blondish blur. But still beautiful,” he said quickly.

She smiled, and squeezed his hand. “What can they do?”

“Oh, they’re pretty sure they can fix both,” he said. “It’s just . . . not a fast or easy or painless procedure, and there still may be permanent damage, mostly in the realm of neuropathy.”

“Which means . . .”

“Nerves that don’t work terribly well, even after having been re-myelinized. Myelin is the coating around the nerves that allows them to conduct nerve impulses--electricity, basically.”

“I am, for the first time in my life, regretting not having a best friend who’s a doctor,” Winona said.

Chris chuckled. “Yeah. My parents actually thought Phil and I were together at one point.”

“I know,” Winona said. “Something about a next-of-kin form.”

“Did Phil tell you?”

“Ah, no,” she said. “Actually, um, I ran into your parents yesterday.”

He blinked. “Oh. Well, that’s one way to do the meet-the-parents shtick. Please tell me they didn’t scare you away permanently.”

“If you’d ever met Tiberius and Martha Kirk, you wouldn’t have to ask that question.”

“I _have_ met George’s parents,” he pointed out. “I still think my dad’s worse. And my mother--I assume she didn’t ask you about our sex life yet.”

“No, thank goodness,” Winona said. “Is that what she studies?”

“This decade,” he said.

“Ah.” She paused and said, “Can I ask--actually, let me say first that I’m sorry that whatever I said or did wasn’t enough and you felt that you needed to keep me away.”

“I don’t--” He sighed. “I’m not entirely sure all my decisions have been rational recently. Not--I mean, the 105--that was completely rational and I definitely will not ever regret that. But--I also had them lower the doses of the drugs that was keeping the--the torture away, and that--I’m not--you don’t need to be around for that.”

“I don’t suppose I need to be around it, but I’m not going to run away.”

He closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths before holding a hand out. “Thank you,” he said, his hand shaking visibly, and she took it in both of hers.

“Besides,” she said, a few minutes later. “I suppose you’re allowed your moment of wavering.”

He gave a quiet huff of laughter. “I suppose I am.” A moment later, he said, “You’re . . . not the only one who was--is--afraid.”

“Yeah?” she said, trying to sound encouraging.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Winona, your first husband has practically been sainted.”

“Oh,” she said. “Huh. I thought since you knew him, you’d be a little more immune to that.”

“You’d think,” he said.

“He--I mean, we were together for fifteen years, married for twelve. I’ve got a lot of memories of him and not all of them are happy-sparkle-fluffy.”

“Well, I know, but--”

“He was a person; a real person, with all that entails. Twenty-five years hasn’t made me forget the year he took me to a hot dog stand for my birthday,” she said.

“Was it a really nice or very significant hot dog stand?”

“No, not really,” she said. “He’d managed to mix up the days of the week. We were on shore leave, but still.” She spread her hands, or at least the one he wasn’t holding on to. “He gave me some dud birthday presents. We fought about stupid things. Once in a while, he’d elbow me in his sleep. Also, he snored like a--well, like no one you’ve ever heard snore before.”

“I don’t snore,” he said, with the certainty only displayed, in Winona’s experience, by people who absolutely _did_ snore.

“You do,” she said, “but it’s faint and I am well used to sleeping through worse.”

“Crap,” he said. “Phil told me he fixed that.”

Winona laughed. “Honestly, though, he--you shouldn’t ever need to worry about him. I don’t know what I can say to make you believe that, but that was a different time and I’m in a lot of ways a different person.”

Chris nodded.

“What hurts right now?” she asked.

“Basically everything,” he said. “My hands are okay, I guess; they’re a little numb.” She loosened her grip on his hand and he shook his head. “You aren’t hurting me.”

“Can I kiss you?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said, and she did.

“You really can’t see me?” she asked.

“Not particularly, no,” he said. “I can’t get any visual clues; I’m mostly going by your voice.”

“Then why on earth did I brush my hair?” she asked, and he laughed. “Look,” she said. “Please don’t keep me out?” She didn’t like how desperate she sounded, but he squeezed her hand and closed his eyes. “I just got you,” she added. “Took me a while to get here, but I made it.”

He smiled. “I won’t keep you out.”


End file.
